


The Skies I'm Under: Hopeless Wanderer

by Star1086



Category: Fringe
Genre: Lots of Alternate Timelines, Season 4 reboot, Time Travel, stranger danger
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-01-25 23:01:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 29,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1665695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star1086/pseuds/Star1086
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 4 reboot. Technically, it's a reboot of the reboot. Or, More specifically, what happens when Peter Bishop erases himself from the timeline.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_“I love you.”_

He tried to focus on those words, on the lips that spoke them, because it was singularly the most exhilarating thing he’d ever heard.  But the agony he was feeling was excruciating, and it was becoming more difficult to hear her blurred words over the roar of concentration he was exerting in order to control…well, whatever it was that was happening to him.

He felt the railroad spike of pain arc upwards through his spine as he was electrocuted and set on fire. Every delicate layer of skin and strand of muscle fiber that wrapped around his bones burned ferociously from the inside out until he was weightless; reduced to nothing more than ash and neural impulses. Then the pain began to recede and he felt his body reconstituting itself, molecule by molecule, until he realized that he was no longer attached. To anything. Not to the restraints of the Wave Sink Device, and not to anything grounded or solid or directional. His arms and legs were free, and for the first time since he stepped into the machine, he felt himself begin to panic.

Peter knew that Walter had created the machine to respond to his DNA alone, although the memory of that future was already fading in comparison to the pain that he’d endured. It had taken Walter nearly five years to construct the machine, dismantle it, and figure out how to send it back to the past, but he was Walter after all, and he’d figured out a way to save both worlds in the process. He’d given Peter the power to untangle the mess he’d created by bringing his son’s consciousness forward, allowing him to realize that the two worlds were inextricably linked. In order for their world to survive, both worlds had to.

In all honestly though, Peter hadn’t given a damn about saving either world. At least not after he’d touched the cold skin of his dead wife _(it can't be worse than this)._ The memory had clung viciously, he remembered grains of sand and the lick of the sea as her fiery coffin had sailed out in a funeral pyre upon the waves. At that moment he would have gladly let both worlds burn into oblivion, because for him the world had already ended. But Walter gave him another way. A way to save her in every reality by making a different choice within what happened. And he took it —saving both worlds was just an added bonus.

Peter inherently understood its power as soon as he interfaced with the machine. He felt the threads of overlapping realities being pinched apart as he sorted through the _what ifs_ , the _should have beens,_ and the _never weres_ to get to the reality he saw fit. And while it was surprisingly easy to split the universes, it was time consuming and exhausting. Like trying to pull apart two different colors of yarn woven within the same thread; balled together so tightly like the skeins his mother used to keep in the basket by the fireplace.

He concentrated on his task knowing that he was forever changing the past, present and the future. The implications of his decision to save both worlds weren’t lost on him. Peter knew there was a very real chance that he wouldn’t come out of this unscathed. He didn’t belong in either universe, but he knew this decision would save Olivia’s life and he was willing to sacrifice everything for that. He wasn’t a hero, not by a long shot, and the fact remained that he was a deeply selfish man. Saving Olivia became his only motivation.

And so he had set about to do it.  It had been disorienting to be alone, but the explosive power of controlling the machine and the ability to slide through space and time was intoxicating. He was fluid and effortless and completely in sync with everything in the universe, from the bonding of chemical elements to the gravitational collapse of star systems. He was able to see the future and disrupt the past, and to bend time and experience to his absolute will. He felt like a god, and in the machine, he was one.

But now that he had accomplished his purpose and the capability was gone, he missed the power coursing through his veins and felt utterly lost.

He was now trapped in a state of nothingness, void of anything familiar or helpful. Peter could see his hands if he desired, could feel the air in his lungs as he breathed if he chose to, but he was floating; formless and shapeless and alone. As soon as he wished he were on solid ground, the firmament became stable under his feet. The void he was in flickered into existence and small dots of light stretched languidly in whirling spirals across the horizon, and it looked like he was standing in a galaxy of his own. He watched it all, carefully, observing and cataloguing every flash as millions of stars and planets winked into existence. It should have been beyond his ability to comprehend, but there it was.

And it was beautiful. And he could expand it into infinity. But it was empty, and he was still alone.

He wanted to see Olivia.

As soon as that yearning wafted through him, the darkness suddenly flickered.  Golden thunderclouds appeared in the distance, thunderclaps reverberating soundlessly as flashes of lightning illuminated the storms from within.

“Hello?” he asked, but there was no one there to answer. His voice echoed out forever into the darkness, bouncing back at him in stereo and he wondered how far the void truly expanded, or if this was just a brilliant trick his dying mind was playing on itself.

“My brain could be shutting down,” he thought casually, although he didn’t truly believe it, “neurons firing images as my brain is devoid of oxygen.” He waited for a rebuttal for a few minutes, but in truth it could have been eons. None came.

“Am I dead?” Peter asked of no one in particular, still hoping there might be an explanation for where he was and what was happening. He was met only with his own returning echoes after they’d traveled the length and width of the void and he tried to discern where the edges of darkness ended. He didn’t _feel dead_. He could sense all his fingers and toes. And he remembered the pain. Surely the dead didn’t feel pain? There was a momentary surge of electricity in the air, and he could smell ozone just before the charge hit deep in his bones and he knew that wherever he was, this wasn’t a place for the dead.

So he went about and tried to concentrate on what he last remembered.

 _“I love you_ ,” Olivia had said, with that look on her face before he’d climbed the steps into the machine, still unsure of what was about to happen.

He’d never said the words back, although he had wanted to. Wanted with every fiber of his miserable, angry being. But it felt too much like saying goodbye if the words were spoken out loud, so he didn’t. That would mean he wasn’t planning on coming back to her. And he wanted so very much to return, if only to say he loved her back.

 _“I love you,”_ she’d said, her lips on his and her smell embedded in his skin. He’d remember it for a thousand lifetimes.

The memory was bright, and filled him so completely and entirely that a force inside his chest erupted. He felt himself come apart, twisting and shredding from the inside out.

“Olivia!” he shouted, and the thought of her face hit him hard, wrenching the air from his lungs as he was thrown backward, falling deeper into the black unknown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I warned you that this was going to be massively long, and a lot complicated. Sorry about the mind-fuck, it was too fun not to. 
> 
> A little context: originally, this was going to be one, coherent, enormous monster of a season 4. Then in the editing process, it was realized that this was actually two individual pieces. So it was deconstructed. A lot. Over and over again. The result of which is what you're currently reading (and previously read with Click In My Head). 
> 
> MAJOR props out to Lemon Sucker for all the enormous work that was put into this, as well as the endless collaboration. Buckle up.


	2. A New Day in the Old town

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter's in store for a hell of ride.

Peter’s body was in complete disarray. He felt himself being pulled apart, twisted inside out and then put back together again over the course of only a few breaths. He didn’t know in which direction he was being thrown, but he had a vague sense that he should somehow be able to control it, even if he had no clue how. He tried to focus hard on Olivia’s face, his failsafe and his one lifeline, and prayed it would be enough to tether him to something solid in the blackness. Or at least keep his molecules from coming unglued altogether.

And just like that, as soon as he willed himself to concentrate, the nauseating rollercoaster was over and he was someplace new. Feet planted on the ground; whole and solid.

He found himself standing in a poorly lit hallway, the walls surrounding him a washed-out avocado color that was familiar for reasons he couldn’t yet piece together. There was no smell he could detect, no warmth he could feel, yet his arms felt unnaturally cold and his stomach clenched tight as the chill of recognition slowly seeped its way up his spine.  He then realized why he felt such dread. This was not a time or place he’d ever wanted to revisit.

“You know she liked you, Peter. Did you know that?” a woman’s voice said from behind him.

Peter’s stomach lurched. The voice was one he recognized instantly. He spun around toward the direction of the sister of the woman he had been hoping to see instead.

She was just as he remembered, same blonde hair and freckles that matched her sister, but he was too stunned by the sight of himself smoothing the hair away from Rachel’s heart-shaped face to really pay any more attention.

The light flickered above the three of them and it was like he was trapped in some horror movie as the memory dawned on him.

The crashing realization of what he was watching startled him into a fresh wave of panic. He had once been where this Peter was now. He began to shake and he wished hard to be anywhere else but here. He could almost imagine the antiseptic smell that came with all hospitals, and he was glad he couldn’t smell it now. He felt pressed in at all sides like he was being pulled away from the shore by the tide and he was powerless against it. But even though he didn’t want to be here to see this again, he found himself unable to turn away.  He ground his heels into the floor; he wasn’t ready to go yet. He had to see. He now concentrated on staying.

This couldn’t be a memory he was experiencing, it felt too real. It was surreal to watch this person who was him and yet wasn’t him, the flat look on his face as he watched himself stare grimly through the open door into the room. He knew who was inside even without being able to see her.

“She had a living will,” Rachel told her Peter. “No life support.”

Peter wasn’t prepared to hear those words, though he’d heard them all before. The conversation wasn’t exactly as he remembered it, and that unnerved him even more. It still struck him in the gut and he had to take in a breath.

“We’re going to do this in the morning…do you wanna…?” Rachel trailed off, and Peter got to watch himself crumble, the pain just as fresh now as when it had happened to him. This was the day Olivia was thrown through the windshield. The day they were told she would never wake up. His throat burned.

He carefully tread closer to the pair, watching himself reach out to cup Rachel’s elbow and saw his presence caused no reaction from either of them; no one could tell he was there.  Peter was able to see the hard lines and red-rimmed eyes on his own face, and idly wondered if he suspected back then why her absence was so devastating to him. It made his stomach hurt to think back.

“It’ll be okay,” Peter spoke up and told himself. “She’s still in there,” he said, even though he knew the other Peter couldn’t hear him.

Peter watched himself move away from Rachel and into the hospital room, and he followed. He pressed through the door swinging closed behind his other self and found that it passed through him soundlessly. He really wasn’t there. Maybe he was a ghost. He moved to Olivia’s bedside as the other Peter sat on the corner of the bed, and Peter wondered if his face had worn the exact same look of grief that he could see plastered on this Peter’s face.

“Already?” Peter asked himself and smiled. _Yes_ , he decided. _Even then._ This Peter had it written all over him as he readied to say goodbye to his partner.

Peter waited, feeling both apprehensive and excited because he knew what happened next. Olivia would spring back to life, frantic and yelling and alive. He watched himself lean over her, and he held his breath in anticipation.

“Goodbye Olivia,” Peter heard himself say as he kissed her forehead. He waited for that exhilarating moment she would explode back to life for him.

Nothing happened.

Peter felt panic well up again. He watched this Peter pull away with glistening eyes and a hard jaw. Olivia stayed just as she was, not even registering a blip on the monitors.

The air was sucked out of the room and Peter’s chest burned. Olivia never woke up.

“No,” Peter let out, watching the other Peter dig his thumb and fingers into his eyes to hide his grief. Nothing had happened.

He now wanted desperately to get away from this reality, but he couldn’t leave. He couldn’t leave her.

He stayed longer than he should have; watched himself hold Olivia’s hand through the night without uttering a single word. Peter knew all the things this man wanted to say, even if he couldn’t say them out loud. He knew the grief; felt it tenfold to an extreme he couldn’t imagine when they’d pulled the sheet back in the morgue and he’d had to identify his wife’s dead body in a reality that wasn’t supposed to be his.

But he’d changed that future.

He couldn’t change this one. Not for this Olivia and Peter.

He watched as Olivia Dunham died at 8:35 the next morning, surrounded by Rachel, Walter, and a man he knew would never get put back together. He knew the man would be long gone as soon as the time of death was declared. He saw the wistful and devastated face of Walter, who realized he’d lost not only Olivia, but his son too. This Peter would never come back to Boston.

He hated being here, and was relieved when he felt an invisible pull drag him backward into the darkness once again.


	3. Ghosts That We Knew

Peter was getting used to navigating the intricacies of space and time, even if he couldn’t quite grasp how he was doing it. The first few times he’d tried to control the sensations it felt like his lungs were being sucked out through a garden hose, so he stopped trying to direct his actions and instead relied on intuition. He was led more by instinct than intellect, and it was alternatively liberating and frustrating trying to get where he wanted to go. Soon, he was visiting worlds that he knew instantly weren’t his; saw Olivias and Walters that didn’t belong to him, experienced a few universes where Peter Bishop was never stolen, but saw many more where he’d succumbed to the illness his Walter had spared him from. 

And each time he peeled away from those realities he’d be thrown into new ones with no touchstone between where he was then and where he was now. It was always startling when no one saw him push his way through dimensions like some shitty rip-off of that Quantum Leap show he’d loved so much as a kid.

After a few false starts he could finally identify the thrum of a reality he wanted to observe; a shadow of an experience that had a certain taste in his mouth and he’d push his way through the film between worlds to follow it to a new reality. It often involved Walter, or sometimes his mother if he was feeling nostalgic. But mostly it revolved around the Olivia he was desperate to see again.

His Olivia was a unique flavor of all her own, similar to other versions of herself that he’d come across, but different enough that as soon as Peter elbowed his way into a new place he’d know almost instantly it was wrong. In the choir of infinite realities there was only one voice that belonged to his Olivia, but it was difficult to discern hers from the rest.

Difficult, but not impossible.

Peter now found himself standing alone in the empty lab in the belly of Harvard, surrounded by cobwebs signifying decades of disuse. There was no warmth here, no sign of his father’s presence other than the abandoned equipment that lay under graying sheets and layers of dust.

Even as he walked around the lab he expected to see perfectly formed footprints in the dust of his wake, but there was no evidence of his presence now. Nor was there any sign he existed in this reality at all. It was all becoming very philosophical and absurd, he thought. He roamed the lab without the ability to touch, trying to find some token trace of what had happened in this room, and to the people associated with it.

Because regardless of the reality, he needed to learn what happened to all the Walters and Olivias he came across, even when they didn’t belong to him.

It was hardest when there was nothing and he had to assume the worst.

There was no feeling here, Peter concluded. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate again, thinking hard of his Olivia and the single voice in the choir that made up his home. He felt his chest buzz and a pull that he followed away from this sad reality, and hoped the next one would be better.

When he opened his eyes he was someplace familiar.

Not just familiar, but _distinct_. There was a heavy sensation he felt in the veins of his arms and he just _knew_. He recognized the apartment instantly; the hardwood floors and the couch and the small bedroom separated by two French doors.

Olivia’s apartment.

He’d seen many iterations of it so far, in several different layouts and colors, but there was something different this time.

“Olivia?” he called out, even though he knew he was invisible.

And she was there. Crumpled against the door, face buried into her hand and he could hear the small huffs of crying.

He knew her as soon as he saw her.

“Olivia!” he said again.

Olivia didn’t respond as she pulled her hand back and Peter pushed closer to see her face.

“What’s wrong with you?” she said out loud and Peter immediately took a step back. _Was she talking to him?_ Olivia stopped abruptly and stared incredulously in his direction and his heart stopped.

She was looking at him.

He tried again, praying he could push through to her. “Olivia?” he said again, loudly, willing himself to just break through the bubble he was in. He felt the static in his head and the whirl in his chest as he begged her to see him.

“You’re not here,” she said stubbornly and closed her eyes, breathing in deeply.

“Olivia, no. It’s me. It’s Peter,” he said excitedly, closing the distance between them. His hand passed through her shoulder. She opened her eyes and looked through him. Peter watched in horror as Olivia’s face crumbled and hot tears rolled down her face. She stood up, walking through him to inspect the room. He turned and followed.

“Tell me you can see me,” Peter said, trying to push through the static he felt again. “Olivia it’s me,” he shouted. Olivia jumped and he held his breath. She didn’t respond again, and he recognized by the set look on her face that she had decided something.

_Uh oh_ , Peter thought as she clenched her fists and strode angrily into the bedroom. Peter followed.

“What are you doing?” he asked as she picked up a small orange prescription bottle with no label.

“Christ, you didn’t get those from Walter?” he asked, and his annoyance turned quickly to apprehension when she looked angrily in his direction, eyes slit as she shook two pills out into her hand.

“Don’t you dare,” Peter rumbled, and watched as Olivia threw two pills into her mouth and swallowed. The instant she did, he felt like a sledgehammer had hit him in the chest and he was thrown violently into nothingness, yelling for Olivia even though he knew she was already gone.


	4. BOOM

Olivia’s soft face was looking at him expectantly, smiling even though he knew she was uncomfortable. It was endearing to know she came along all the same.

“You sure about this?” Peter asked as he took her hand. “You can run screaming right now and I promise I won’t chase you.” He said it jokingly, but felt tremors of apprehension that she might actually do it.

Olivia surprised him by squeezing back, threading her fingers through his in a silent affirmation that she wasn’t going to run.

“You changing your mind?” she asked.

Peter shook his head and knew he had a stupid grin plastered all over his face. He was secretly relieved it was just the two of them now, since they’d rarely had a minute to themselves lately. He wanted to capture her face in his memory at that moment and treasure it into his old age.

“Never.”

Olivia wasn’t wearing white, not that he’d minded, but it happened to be one of the rare days she was wearing a skirt, and that made it feel just a touch more conventional. A traditional wedding was never her thing, and Peter loved her for that.

“I’m sorry Walter couldn’t be here,” she said sadly, and Peter felt his smile drop. He let her lead him further down the hallway, their combined footsteps echoing like rain.

“You know he always wanted a daughter,” Peter said softly, distracted. Walter had been sentenced just two days ago, and his absence burned. He wasn’t sure he could say his father’s name out loud. It was too devastating. It had been Olivia’s idea to sneak over to the Justice of the Peace, away from everyone, because in her way she wanted to remind him that he wasn’t truly alone.

“I love you,” he said as they reached the door and knocked. Olivia’s recent promotion meant she could call in some favors, and as a result there was no line that afternoon. Once the first vortex had ripped through Cambodia and the whole world started going to shit, hordes of the population rushed to get married. They didn’t even have rings yet. He wasn’t sure if he could look at her just then, hoping his words were enough as he waited for the door to open.

She then did something unexpected; she leaned in and pressed her lips to the hollow of his throat in a rare display of affection.

“Always,” was her simple affirmation. But just like everything else that had been good in Peter’s life, the image suddenly flickered and burned into blackness.

* * *

 

Peter didn’t know how long he’d been out, but when he opened his eyes he was face down against dirt and gravel, feeling like he’d been on the receiving end of a baseball bat.

Several disorienting moments passed as he tried to wade through the hazy images from his memory, Olivia’s face coming to the forefront and he went from disoriented to flat panic as he dug his fingers into the earth. These continual shifts seemed to be completely out of his control, and being punched into and out of existence made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and his bones vibrate. It set his teeth on edge.

“Olivia!” he yelled, desperate to find her again, remembering her defensive face glaring back at him smugly. She was there, _she was right there._ He knew it had been her. There was a pull he felt in his bones that he hadn’t felt with the others. A lit spark that belong to her. It was his Olivia.

“Olivia!” he shouted again, voice hoarse as he tried to claw himself out of the memory and back into a standing position. The air was thick as sludge in his lungs as he sucked in breath after breath while trying to will himself back into her apartment. She’d seen him somehow, knew he was there, and he needed to get back to her. But the minute she’d tossed back those damn pills she’d probably gotten from Walter, he’d found himself flung here. Wherever here was.

His head was still spinning as he took in his surroundings; uncertain where he now stood as he took in the dusty barren fields at what appeared to be the edge of a city. There was nothing here that felt familiar.

He was lost. He could be worlds or years or centuries away, and all he knew for certain was that his Olivia wasn’t here in this place. Scanning for a touchstone, he thought he might recognize something familiar, but there was nothing.  All he sensed was that there was something decidedly off about this place.

He started walking against the sudden onslaught of his unease, feeling like he was too far out in the open.  A side effect of a lifetime of bad deeds; he felt danger like he felt the sun.

It didn’t take long to realize where he was and why he hadn’t recognized it. The remnants of the downed blue sign at the edge of the cracked asphalt still read “Welcome to Connecticut – We’re full of surprises!” but off into the horizon he could see the crumbled edges of destroyed buildings and the streets void of people. He stopped short. Cars were abandoned and blistering in the sun, crushed against one another and deserted. Trash and debris were scattered everywhere, and in the distance he could see a pillar of black smoke billowing against the tangerine of the sun.

This was definitely not a place he wanted to be.

“Why here?” he mused aloud, and in the distance sensed eyes on him. It made his skin crawl.

“This is not good,” he muttered as he walked. Talking made him feel more human, even if it was just to himself. “What happened here?”

“Keep moving,” a gruff voice answered from behind him and he yelped in surprise. He spun to see the barrel of a semi-automatic handgun pointed at his chest and he backtracked so quickly that he fell hard onto the ground.

“Jesus Christ,” he exclaimed but instantly felt both relieved and stupid when the person holding the gun walked right through him, never taking notice. He watched the figure as it shuffled by, a football player of a woman with an air of military bravado about her.  She was dressed in makeshift fatigues and her short hair was tucked under a dirty Red Sox cap.

He stretched his neck back to see the path of her gun barrel and nearly came unglued when he saw who she was actually talking to.

By now he should hardly have been surprised. He scrambled quickly back up and ran through the woman to catch up to the Peter and Olivia she was herding along at gunpoint.

“I can’t believe it,” he puffed at them as he caught up, “every damn time you two have to be in some kind of trouble. Can’t you have one reality where you’re retired in Florida?” he asked, exasperated. This Peter and Olivia had obviously been through difficult times; Olivia was thinner and her hair was long, tightly braided down her spine, the sharp cut of her cheeks protruding from under the skin. This Peter didn’t look any better, his whole face covered in bruises and his hair too long and beginning to curl around the edges. Their dirty clothes were worn and blood spattered in places that put Peter on edge. What the hell was happening here?

“You’re being recruited,” Olivia said quietly to her Peter as she stuffed her hands into the folds of her pockets. The other Peter glanced back at their captor with slit eyes.

“And what about you?” her Peter asked in the same hushed tone. There was something about these two, the way this Peter kept a steady gait one step behind Olivia’s hip. It was the same tactic he would have used, both orienting himself and providing protection. As he watched the two of them quietly conferring, Peter never let himself lose track of the woman or the gun, feeling the surge of frustration as he tried to puzzle together what was happening without enough pieces of the whole picture.

“I think there’s a reason we haven’t run into a lot of female Resisters,” Olivia answered evenly, and both he and the other Peter’s hands curled into fists.

“You read minds now?” the other Peter gruffed. Peter’s ears pricked up. What the hell were Resisters?

And then he sensed it. There was something both different and familiar about this Olivia. Peter couldn’t say exactly what it was, but it felt like a little fuse was lit that made it easier for him to push through the sludge to stay here.

Something suddenly moved along the side of a building, putting Peter on high alert.

“Enough talking!” the woman bellowed at the pair, but Peter was no longer looking at the armed woman.  He was distracted by the movement he’d seen. When he realized what it was his heart shuddered and almost stopped all together.

“What the hell is that?” he said wildly, watching as the frail, decomposing frame of a cadaver crawled from the underside of a wrecked car and he felt a jolt in his abdomen as shock gave way to fear.

“Fuck,” Peter said, fascinated and sick. The crawling thing was the shell of a human being, the grey skin loose around its face and its eyes distinctly cloudy and yellowed. It slithered along on its belly, dead legs flattened behind it and streaming putrid liquid from the eviscerated intestines trailing from its split abdomen. This place was _not_ where he wanted to be. The thing’s jaws snapped at him and Peter sprinted to catch back up.

“YOU HAVE GOT TO BE CRAZY TO BE OUT HERE,” he shouted, finger stretched out and pointing to the dead thing that was slowly following them. “Why on earth would you be in fucking Connecticut? You’d bring her out here in this?” he shouted angrily to the other Peter.

Getting no reaction, he turned his frustration to Olivia. “You’re goddamned crazy, Olivia!”

Something odd happened. As soon as he said her name, Olivia tilted her jaw at him, almost imperceptibly.

“Olivia?” Peter repeated, frozen, “can you hear me?”

Olivia leaned in towards her Peter again, eyes wide as she glared straight through where he now stood still in his tracks. “We’re not alone,” she said then, just loud enough for her Peter to hear.

Fuck.

“Olivia,” he tried again, wedging himself into the sliver of space between her and the other Peter. “If you can hear me you have got to get out of here,” he said urgently, “both of you. There are _things_ out here.”

“And it sees us?” the other Peter then responded, ignoring him. Olivia’s eyes were fixed on the spot where he was keeping pace with them, and she nodded.

“Olivia,” Peter hissed again, trying to break through to her. His chest was on fire and his fear so overwhelming that he did something he hadn’t intended—he reached for her. For an instant he thought he felt the warm skin of her cheek under his fingertips, but as soon as he did it she stopped, arm snaking out to grab her Peter, her face drained of all color.

Peter pulled back his hand and retreated like he’d burned her with fire. “Christ,” he said, “I’m sorry.”

“Move it!” the voice said behind them. Peter had almost forgotten about the woman with the gun while he’d been distracted by Olivia’s reactions.

He watched in horror then as Olivia suddenly stumbled like she was drunk and sagged into the other Peter, who grabbed her around the shoulders as she quickly dropped like a ton of bricks.

“Olivia!” The other Peter said in alarm, his face going completely white with shock. Peter dropped to his knees next to them, panic filling his veins when Olivia’s eyes rolled back into her skull.

“Didn’t you hear me?” the woman bellowed angrily, and both Peters snapped out a terse “Something’s wrong!” at the same time.

Olivia’s eyes flickered open, pupils dilated and glazed over as she ignored the frustrated face of her own Peter to stare at him as he hunched over them.

She looked right at him.

“They’re everywhere,” she said.

Just then there was a terrifying pull from inside, punching deep and tight into Peter’s chest and he flickered into blackness, unable to harness the fear into remaining solid.

* * *

When he opened his eyes again he was still in the same location, but yards away from where he had last been. A gunshot exploded through the air and he ducked. He spotted Olivia now being dragged by Peter along the road. As he struggled back to his feet he saw the woman who had been holding them captive now splayed out on her back, writhing as a pack of dead things tore into her skin and dug into her bowels, and then everything exploded in red.

“Holy god,” Peter exclaimed in horror. There was another punch and he was thrown back into the flickering darkness and once again he found himself someplace else, further down in the heart of the town, gunfire peppering overhead and the echoing booms of what he recognized as tripped landmines sounding in the distance. It made his head swirl.

Although he couldn’t smell it he could almost feel the dust billowing around him, and he was spooked by the ghostly twang of rapid gunfire ripping through the air. At every corner there were men in fatigues, their faces blurred in battle against more of the lifeless rotted corpses that wandered into the streets like ants and Peter was nearly swept away by the commotion.

“Olivia!” he shouted through the uproar as a chunk of a towering building behind him erupted and crumbled, shaking the pavement he stood on.  His eyes ranged over the scene in front of him as he searched for her.  He spied Peter first, who now had a rifle pointing into the crowd, indiscriminately firing at whoever or whatever ventured too close.

“There she is!” he pointed when he saw Olivia’s blond hair laying against the rubble of the pavement, a gangly young man standing above her with one foot on her back and his rifle pointed at her upturned face. He knew her Peter couldn’t hear him, but felt enormous relief when the other Peter took a step in her direction anyway, eyes locked.

The sound of the gunshot hit him faster than the ricochet of the bullet. Peter looked down at his chest, felt the whoosh of the bullet as it pushed through him and straight into the other Peter’s back. The man was thrown to the pavement.

“FUCK,” Peter shouted. He dropped to the fallen man’s side, but he could see the blood spreading across his shoulder blades and he felt the bile rise in his throat.

“Get up!” he ordered as he saw the other Peter try to get his palms under him. “Get up, goddamnit, she needs you!”

But he wasn’t getting back up, and it was too late to waste any more time on him by the looks of the gaping wound and the amount of blood expanding onto the pavement. Under another crack of gunfire Peter now ran, through dead bodies and live ones, through gunfire and grenades, against the sweltering heat of the yellowing sun that was quickly fading in the distance.

He ran toward Olivia. He could see her face caked in blood, the barrel of the rifle stabbing into her cheek and the kid’s finger toying with the trigger. With every fiber of his soul he hated being in this place. There was nothing but fear and horror and death here and he didn’t want her here, even if this wasn’t his Olivia.

Peter dropped to his knees as he raged in hot fury, trying to knock the barrel of the rifle away in what he knew would be a useless attempt. He looked futilely into Olivia’s bloodied face. Over the sounds of ricocheting gunfire all around he heard the click of the trigger above them. Her face was inches from his, her eyes already closed and he wanted so badly to cradle her head away from the gun’s blast.

“Come with me,” he muttered, concentrating as he closed his eyes. He didn’t know if she could hear him but he didn’t care any more. He focused hard on her, on her face, and thought of home. He felt a blister of intense heat engulf him in a way he didn’t understand and heard shouts of pain in the distance, and suddenly he was alone and back inside the darkness once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: To read the story this particular vignette was taken from, check out “Apocalypse Now!” under my same name over on FFnet. Yes, I realize I'm fic-ing one of my own fic.


	5. Whispers In the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And we continue.

There wasn’t enough air left in the world for Peter to breathe in his grief. Every footstep through the building was deliberate. One foot, then the other. Left, right, left right. He had to concentrate purposefully on them because he knew if he didn’t, he’d turn and dive headfirst into the vengeance he so desperately wanted. Anger was easy.

Funny, he thought, it hadn’t been two days since he’d been in this same hospital getting shrapnel dug out of his gut thanks to Moreau.

A young blonde woman in fatigues stopped him when he hit the entrance to the hospital wing.  She had to ask him twice for authorization because he didn’t quite know how to bring himself to form sentences.

“Bishop,” he croaked, his voice failing. “Peter Bishop.”

The woman looked through the list of names on her tablet and then at Peter’s identification. Her face turned into a frown as she put it together.

“Of course Agent Bishop, go on in.”

He nodded and quickly raced to move past her.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she tacked on as he passed, and he froze, eyes blurring angrily as he nodded but didn’t look back, his back straight.

He saw Astrid first at the end of the hall, and he didn’t know how he’d kept it together before then. Her little round face was fraught with emotion as she came to meet him. As soon as he saw her face he knew. Whatever strength had kept him upright snapped and he crumbled, catching himself against the cool metal of nearest the wall.

“Peter…I’m—“ she babbled next to him, and he felt her grief and it only fueled his own. It was Astrid who’d called him. Her voice couldn’t hide the hysterics and Peter could barely understand her over the blood rushing in his ears. He knew it was something terrible.

He could only make out “accident” and “Olivia” and that was all he needed to press the pedal of his sedan to nearly one hundred on the highway and his ear glued to his phone as he called Olivia’s cell phone over and over again. It rang but she never picked up. Eventually, it stopped ringing and went straight to voice mail. That made it feel even darker.

Olivia no doubt would have scolded him for being so reckless in a police issued vehicle. As soon as he thought about her name, he pushed the pedal to the floor and flipped on the siren for good measure. He kept telling himself there was a mistake. Olivia would be fine, she’d be okay. It was Olivia.

Actually being in the hospital made it too real.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Please stop,” Peter said as he pulled away from Astrid, breathing through the blinding grief that was slowly turning into unbridled rage. He swiped his hand furiously against his cheek, trying not to think about that fact that he had made her bacon that morning that she had forgotten to eat and he couldn’t remember the last time he told her he loved her.

He finally looked away from the spot at the wall. “Did…she—“ he caught himself on the lump in his throat when Astrid’s eyes welled as he stood there.

“Was it an accident? Did she suffer?” Visions of vortexes shredding people haunted him, but he asked anyway. Astrid put her little hand on his shoulder and it felt like it might crush him.

“It was instantaneous,” she answered. “They need a family member to ID her…”

“What happened?” he said, ignoring her words.

“Don’t do this to yourself,” Astrid tried to guide him away from the anger that was rising, and Peter recognized her tone as the same voice she saved for his father when he was particularly lost in his madness.

“What was it?” Peter seethed when she didn’t answer; the anger was hot and he leaned into it. “It was _him,_ wasn’t it? He did this to her,” he snarled as he felt his jaw tighten.

“It doesn’t matter, not right now,” Astrid interjected in a forcefully strong voice. It was the same as telling him outright. He knew exactly who was responsible for this. The anger was snuffed out quickly; helplessness and dread followed.

“Does Ella know?” Peter asked. Astrid nodded.

“She was first to respond to the scene.”

Peter let Astrid lead him down the hallway, suddenly aware there were other agents scurrying by. He hadn’t noticed them before. He didn’t care.

“Walter?”

Astrid hesitated, clenching her hand around Peter’s side. “Not yet.”

“This will kill him,” Peter muttered.

“You don’t have to do this…not right now. Ella can—“

Peter felt hollowed out, a gaping hole replaced where his heart used to be.

“—No. I need to do it. She’s my wife.” Peter argued. He had to see for himself.

Astrid left him at the door, sparing him his and Olivia’s privacy. He knew Astrid had probably pulled rank to allow him be in the morgue alone. To let _them_ be in the morgue alone. The room was a sickly grey color, the lights dimmed. A silver drawer was already pulled out from the cooling unit that would keep decomposition at bay until they could make arrangements.

The sheet was starched white and glowed green in the low light. The air here was wrong, too flat and the stench of formalin clung to his clothing. He instinctively knew she was under the sheet.

“Olivia,” he said quietly in the air. His hand trembled in the folds of the sheet as he hesitated.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally as he pulled back the sheet. 

The eruption was a lightening bolt of pain to his chest and Peter was thrown back into consciousness, still on his knees and hands still raging with adrenalin.

“Olivia,” he groaned into the street. She was gone. He turned to panic.

He craned his neck to search for her, looking along the pavement of the alley but he knew it was futile.  This place was far different, but he still shouted for her anyway. The buildings around him were intact and whole; the bricks spray-painted in graffiti and he noticed a portrait of Van Gogh staring ruefully back at him.

Olivia was nowhere

_To sleep, perchance to dream_ was scrawled in neon above the image and Peter’s voice was low and angry.

“That’s Shakespeare, asshole,” he muttered as he pushed himself to his knees, feeling both the disorientation and crippling disappointment. This place was familiar.

The memory of Olivia’s bloodied and broken face burned as it haunted him. He hadn’t been able to save her. He’d left her. He left her behind with the barrel of the rifle shoved into her face in that unholy place. His stomach swirled and his head spun, and the rage was intoxicating and sickening as it dropped him to his knees again, hacking up bile onto the indiscriminate blackness of the pavement.

“I imagine it takes some getting used to,” a voice said from behind him and Peter froze. He knew that voice. “It must not be a pleasant experience,” it continued in a dead monotone.

Not five feet away stood a man that Peter recognized immediately, the dark grey of his fedora tipped perfectly as he watched Peter scramble up from the pavement.

Peter was already on his feet, rambling in stunned disbelief. “You have got to be kidding me. Every time I think that maybe my life couldn’t be any more complicated or fucked up here you come with a beacon or a prophecy or a goddamned stun gun. I’ve really got to stop being surprised anymore. Well, at least I know I’m not dead now.”

The Observer Peter knew as September tilted his head as Peter squared off. A million angry questions swirled around, but a sudden chord was struck in Peter’s head. He was suddenly riled with hope. “You can take me back! Take me back to get to where I was before and we can save her.” Peter didn’t bother to stop himself from shouting, shoulders coiled. He could still save her. “I think it was somewhere right outside Connecticut—“

“—Which her do you intend on returning to?” September responded evenly, effectively cutting Peter’s excitement off and waiting for an explanation as casually as if Peter had asked to borrow a stick of gum.

“Olivia!” Peter snapped. “The Olivia I was just with. They’re going to kill her. I was just there seconds ago.” Peter took two steps into his direction, feeling light-headed; dizzy with anticipation.

“There are an infinite number of realities, with an infinite number of humans attached to each of them. Which one would you suggest going back to?”

Peter staggered, frustrated. September pulled back the sleeve of his suit to look at the watch he was wearing, keeping time for long, infuriating seconds. The man’s nonchalant behavior brought Peter close to cracking.

“But they’re going to kill her,” Peter finished numbly. September never looked up, watching the time pass as Peter begged.

“There are an incalculable number of probabilities. Every possibility is a reality. It is impossible to go back to an exact reality, regardless of your desire or intent.” 

Peter felt the last thread of sanity shred, the emotion raw and wild.

“Then why are you here?” Peter huffed. “Why is it whenever you show up you bring more questions than goddamn answers!?”

The Observer tilted his head. “Which questions are those?”

“Like why I’m here! Why am I being ping-ponged around the universes like a fucking pinball? Why do I have to watch people I care about having their heads blown off and not be able to do anything about it?” Peter rattled off. “Where am I?”

September gave Peter a pointed look. “What do you remember?” he asked. Peter had to take a few seconds to wade through the barrage of different realities and memories that were all pushing their way through his consciousness.

“Olivia…” he said. “I remember Olivia,” Peter recounted. “I remember bridging the worlds together.”

“Do you remember why?” September continued.

A flash of Olivia’s face flickered in his mind like a dying flame.

“Because it was the only way to save her,” he said wistfully

“The machine,” Peter answered his own question, “I did this. I erased myself.”

“Yes. The anomaly has been corrected.”

Peter realized something he hadn’t before. “Where my Olivia is, where my Walter is—that world doesn’t include Peter Bishop. I knew there would be repercussions…” said Peter, expecting September to argue. He couldn’t quite finish his thought. September looked at Peter’s revelation with indifference.

“You went to the future,” September said, suddenly returning to gaze at his watch.

Peter hesitated. “Why are you here? I expect you’re not about to whisk me away to return me to Kansas.”

September’s watch disappeared back under his sleeve, and obviously satisfied he turned his head toward the mouth of the alley like he was waiting for someone.

“Tell me,” he began, ignoring Peter’s frustration, “have you retained your sense of smell? I’ve always wondered.”

Peter was taken aback. He answered without thinking. “No.”

“That is unfortunate.” September looked almost sympathetic for the first time. Peter’s jaw clenched. “You must let me know when it returns.” September took a step backward. Peter followed.

“No, wait goddamn it. I asked you once what would happen to me if I got into the machine,” Peter said, “is this it?”

September turned away then, walking at a casual speed down the alley. Peter was in hot pursuit, his head swimming.

“Will she live now?” he shouted at the Observer’s back. September stopped, turned thoughtfully and tilted his head.  

“The future you witnessed will not come to pass,” September said.

Something stuttered in Peter’s chest, and Peter decided to press on, hopeful that he might actually get some information. September’s attention suddenly snapped back at him, looking serious enough to make Peter stop.

“They’ll be looking for you,” September said, “they won’t be pleased that you’ve returned.”

There was a second before the impact hit Peter.

“Returned? Returned where? And who’s going to be looking for me?” Peter exclaimed, exasperated. “I’m not anywhere. I don’t exist,” he raised his arms like it might elaborate his predicament. “I blinked myself out of existence getting into that goddamned machine! No one can see me!”

September looked seriously at Peter for a moment, then took a step back from him, this time drawing out a pocket watch to keep time.

“They will,” September answered. “If they know where to look. You’re an unpredictable variable; a boy who was supposed to die at the age of eight, and yet you did not. Your survival is essential,” September said, disappearing as he purposely walked away from Peter. “If I can find you, so can they.”

Peter had to jog to keep up with the man, feeling his fingers curl. September continued to walk away. Peter continued to follow.

“What the hell does that mean?” Peter shouted as September disappeared around the corner. “How do I get home?” There was no answer.

“Damn it!” he cursed furiously as he rounded the corner, realizing that the Observer had already vanished into the crowd of people littering the streets. He peered up at the massive building that he was now standing against, overwhelming and impeccably white and Peter would have recognized it in any world.

“Massive Dynamic?” he muttered as he shielded his eyes against the sun’s harsh winter glare. He _was_ in New York.  He felt a combustible flicker in the air and he knew September had brought him here, to this place and this time, for a reason.  Somehow this might be his chance to get home. He’d beat the answers out of September if it came to that. Who the hell would be looking for him??

“Where are you?” Peter grunted as he returned his search for the Observer. He waded through the crowds of people passing him by, expecting someone to see him, to part around him, but they passed straight through him. September was gone, and so were his answers.

Irritated, he stuffed his hands into his pockets, his mouth a scowl. He was getting tired of being invisible. He tasted homesickness. He noticed a woman pass in front of him, within an inch of where he stood, so close that Peter could see the lipstick smeared on her teeth. His eyes widened when he saw the flash of the Observer, just the blur inside of an instant, right before a gangly kid walking in the opposite direction and with an outstretched arm hooked the purse from the woman’s shoulder and took off running.

“Holy hell!” Peter exclaimed, watching in amusement as the woman screamed bloody murder when the kid made off with her purse.

The amusement faded as September blinked back into existence once again, staring back at him from inside the alley Peter had just left. The purse-snatcher ran not two feet away from where September was standing.

Peter took an aggravated step back onto the street before sprinting back into the alley, wanting to wring the Observer’s neck. This day was seriously fucked. He was so homesick that he felt ill. But the Observer had already blinked back out of existence when he made it back to the alley way where he’d originally started, planting his hands on his knees as he attempted to breathe.

There was a flutter through him as he felt someone pass through him, a bubble popping awkwardly and it made Peter’s teeth chatter.

“Shit,” he muttered through the sensation, but stopped in awe when he noticed who had pressed through him. The wild blonde hair refracted in the sunlight as Olivia raced on, her black coat billowing out as she ran.

“Stop! FBI!” he heard her voice carry through the alley.

“Olivia!” Peter shouted and raced to catch up with her as she tackled the purse-snatcher and threw him against the wall, the kid’s face exploding into shock.  

“Did you see him?” She shouted at the thief, forearm crushed against his throat. Even though Olivia’s face was flushed deep crimson with a dangerous snarl, he felt a thrill run through him.  He _knew_ this was his Olivia.

“Olivia! He’s already gone!” Peter tried to explain, watching the kid’s face go from flat white to blue. “The Observer’s gone! He went that way!” Peter outstretched his hand, pointing to the mouth of the alley, and still no September in sight. The kid’s voice cracked when he tried to answer, Olivia’s elbow digging dangerously.

“Stop it, Olivia,” Peter said evenly, eyeing the boy’s face.

“The man! You ran straight through him. He was wearing a pea coat. Dark hair.” Olivia grated out, and Peter took a step back. He looked down at his clothing, and realized he was wearing his old navy pea coat. Had he been wearing it all along?

Shit. She could see him!

“Olivia, I’m right here!” Peter said excitedly, trying to push his way into Olivia’s consciousness. “Can you see me? Olivia!” he tried to touch her cheek, her arm, anything to distract her from crushing the kid’s trachea. He saw Olivia’s eyes glaze, her grip loosen as the kid begged her to take the purse back. Slowly, she released him all together, and she stumbled back drunkenly like she’d had too much whisky.

“Olivia…” Peter said warningly, unsure what was happening.

“Get out of here,” Olivia muttered and the kid took off like his ass had been lit on fire. She was teetering dangerously.

“Easy now,” Peter tried, looking around for something that might help. What the hell was going on?

“Olivia?”

A new voice called Olivia’s name from behind Peter and it made all the blood rush in from Peter’s ears.

“Charlie!” Peter exclaimed. He was just as Peter remembered him.  Had he survived somehow? Maybe Peter was further off than he thought.

No, Peter decided. She was his Olivia. He knew this without a doubt.  He turned back to find her gun in his face.

Uh oh.

“Olivia, it’s me,” he said, confused as he stared down the gun she had trained on him. Charlie answered for him though, a little gruff muttering of his own alarm. She couldn’t see Peter. She was pointing it at Charlie.

“Stay where you are!” she shouted, her drained voice cracking and her eyes wild. Something was wrong with her. She looked drugged, her movements slow and bewildered.

Peter felt the stirrings of the pull he dreaded begin inside of his gut; the thrumming that was the precursor that Peter knew well by now.

“No,” Peter grumbled as he ground his feet into the alley, willing himself to stay. “Olivia, put down the gun,” he pleaded, feeling the familiar pull all but rip him apart as he watched Olivia pull the trigger, and then he felt the onslaught of shock and horror when he was shredded into pieces and the world around him faded into nothingness.


	6. I'm Miles From Where You Are

Being shredded to pieces and then repeatedly put back together again was doing a world of damage to the fibers of Peter’s body. He felt like shit, each and every time he disappeared and was belched back into existence made him feel just a little less durable than before. He wondered how much longer he could keep doing this before he couldn’t come back at all.

When he opened his eyes from the empty weightlessness he’d been inhabiting, he found he was on his back, his neck tickled by grass. There was a cool breeze in the air as it fluttered against his eyelashes, the sun warm on his cheeks. He wanted to lay here, to nurse the ragged bones inside his body and to drift back into nothingness because he was done with this universe hopping business.

But a little voice in the back of his head called on him to focus. Somewhere out there his Olivia was waiting. His Walter. His life. The encounter with the Observer reminded him that there were larger forces at work out there besides just being invisible.

 _“They’ll be looking for you,”_ September had said, _“they won’t be pleased that you’ve returned.”_

Peter knew there was something distinctly sinister about the warning. Who was looking for him? Other Observers? How many more could there be? What would they want with him? It wasn’t as if he’d actually returned, at least not really. And where was it that he was supposed to go?

Peter didn’t contemplate those questions for long before his aching knees and back began begging him to move. So against great protest from his limbs, he opened his eyes and sat up, looking around. Though he had already encountered an eclectic range of universes, this was the first time he was absolutely startled at what he saw. 

“It’s not,” he muttered as he studied the worn red bricks he remembered with an odd clarity. “It can’t be.” 

He knew this lawn, knew the house with the little brown shutters and the cracks in the driveway. This was his house. The home he once shared with his mother. He recognized it, even now.

He struggled to his feet, feeling completely overwhelmed. It was odd, the house was _exactly_ as he’d remembered it when he was younger, not this vague thing that existed inside his adult memory. As he raced up the porch he noticed the wreath his mother would put out during the summers to make the dreaded Bishop home more friendly to the neighborhood that distrusted them. Peter was filled with emotions he hadn’t felt in a long time.

“Mom!” he called as he pushed through the door. He stood in the living room of his childhood. He felt tears sting his eyes; there were so many memories here. Most of them terrible. But there was safety here, too.

Peter had never been able to control time as he’d moved through the universes, he’d always assumed that he couldn’t. It never occurred to him that he could.

But here he was, standing in his childhood home, in his adopted universe. 

“This is a development,” he muttered as he soaked in everything he thought he’d forgotten after a lifetime of being away from this place. The worn hardwood floor with the matching rugs Peter had thought were hideous even as a child. He wandered over to the mantle, found pictures in neat frames of him growing up. He stopped at a particular picture of the three of them; Walter, his mother and himself as a small child. He’d always wondered why she kept it growing up. Walter was someone they never talked about much after he’d been committed. Not that they talked about much anyway.

“I can jump through time, too,” Peter mused, and there became an endless abyss of new possibilities. Up until now he’d been drifting along in a singular motion, assuming that time moved only in one direction. It was mind blowing.

Suddenly he was floored; this meant so much. He could see his mother, alive. Could see Olivia as a child; see his grandfather Bishoff. He was greedy with the possibilities.

He twisted around, consumed with the thought of being able to see his mother again. After the truly terrible things he’d encountered; all the death and terrifying worlds he’d witnessed, he was beyond ready to see her face.

“Mom!” he searched, racing through familiar rooms, wishing he could detect the homey smell of pancake batter that he associated with her. He stopped short in the kitchen when he realized the water from the faucet was babbling from being left on, the sink filled and spilling over onto the floor in a small waterfall. There was no one in the room.

He knew something was wrong. A cold chill replaced the warmth he’d felt just moments ago. Nothing he’d experienced since being erased from his timeline had been good, and he dreaded what he would see next.

Suddenly he detected a faint smell in the air, and although he couldn’t hone in on what it was exactly, he knew it wasn’t the pancake batter he would have killed for. It was distinct enough that he could almost recognize it, sour tinged with sweet. He was filled with a sinking feeling and wanted to get the hell out of there. He concentrated, hoping to feel the tell-tale signs that signaled his imminent departure, but there was no pull in his stomach—he was stuck here.

The sound of the running water became too much, and he had to leave. Beyond the kitchen was the garage, the door pulled shut. He saw it then, and the smell caught up to him and stung his eyes. Bluish smoke fluttered from underneath the door.

“Jesus, ma,” he muttered in fear as he gripped the knob to open the door, not realizing he was actually physically turning the handle. He was overwhelmed by the bitter taste of exhaust and the sour smell that made him dizzy and his eyes blur.

Everything stopped. Everything. The station wagon he remembered riding shotgun in when she’d take him to school was parked in the garage, the trim barely visible through the smoke that filled the tiny space. He knew what he was witnessing, even though he hadn’t been there when it had happened.

“Moooooom!” Peter yelled through the smoke, pushing into the garage and choking through the near-suffocating thickness. He found her there in the front seat, brown curly hair just as he remembered, slumped over lifeless against the steering wheel. “Mom!” Peter shouted again, trying to open the door or smash through the window, but nothing happened. His hands pounded soundlessly through air, enraging him.  Peter wanted to burn this world—the world that he knew was his. He had been spared this experience, spending the summer abroad, racing through Europe with a fake passport and a lifted backpack.

Why had he been brought back here, to this terrible time and place?

Peter lost sight of everything, the world around him cracking.  He was powerless in his grief, and although he thought he could almost feel the glass against his curled fist, it wouldn’t break.  He couldn’t push through. Not that it mattered, he knew it was already too late. He knew his mother was already dead. Choking through tears, he slid to the ground and in a blink, was back in the water-soaked kitchen, his back flat against the oven and unable to feel the chill from the water that was slowly ruining his mother’s linoleum floor.

“It is unfortunate that you had to see this, although I assure you, it was necessary,” September’s voice said from above him, standing in the rapidly pooling water next to Peter. Peter’s head was between his knees and he stared daggers into the floor.

“Of course,” Peter grumbled, knee-deep in self-pity and fury. He lifted his head to stare at the man. “Of course you’re here. Because it’s not a fucking homecoming without a bald asshole who talks in riddles like some goddamned Yoda.” Peter’s voice was laced with poison. “So yeah. Thanks for sharing this with me.”

“I brought you here because it was necessary for you to see it,” September said.

“You’re the one brought me to this place?” Peter blustered angrily. He didn’t bother to move from his place on the ground. His knees hurt. Everything hurt. Suddenly he felt deflated.

“I give up. You want me to disappear? Fine.” Peter wiped the back of his hand against his face. “I’m sick of having to see people I care about—“ he cut out, furious again.

“Opening a new door always has repercussions,” September said.

Peter’s sigh was heavy. “Oh yeah? Who told you that?” Peter grumbled.

“Your father,” September said. Peter looked up. “I watched him tell it to children. I thought it was appropriate.” Peter opened his mouth to argue when September cut him off, face bland. “It is essential that you do not disappear. But you will have to make difficult decisions. And you must be aware of the repercussions of certain choices.”

Peter had had enough. He pushed himself up to his full height, his knees burning. “Stop it! Now that I don’t exist, my choices don’t matter any more! What repercussions do you think I have any control over? What I’ve gathered so far is I’ve got the choice of either allowing my wife to get her brains blown out by my father or letting two worlds tailspin into extinction? No, thank you! Just let me blink out of existence and be done with it! There’s no way I can save anyone.  By surviving, I caused all those things to happen!” Peter ranted, infuriated.

September remained calm, head cocked to the side and Peter could have strangled him.

“This Elizabeth Bishop’s death was necessary to ensure your continued existence in this universe.  You are in this world because that is where you are meant to be. It has been foretold. This is how you will ensure their survival.”

“What are you talking about?  Whose survival?” Peter cut in.

September’s face didn’t twitch. “Everyone’s.”

Peter leaned heavily on the counter, the taste of the exhaust settling on his tongue. He tried unsuccessfully to fan the toxic fumes away from his face.

September noted his discomfort.  “It’s returning,” September asked, “your sense of smell?”

Peter nodded, still unsure what to say; processing his thoughts.

“What are you telling me?” Peter said from under his hand. “Or more specifically, why are you telling me this?” When Peter opened his eyes again, they were in the living room, both standing at opposite sides of the room. The smell was gone.

“You’re important to her,” September said casually. Peter’s mouth went dry. “And your existence will ensure her survival.”

Peter’s heart jumped. “Olivia? But you said that since I stepped into the Machine, she’d live—“ he started.

“That future you witnessed has been negated, yes. But there are now repercussions owing to your absence that I did not foresee.”

Peter stood at the mantle of the fireplace, touching the pictures that framed his childhood, his mind whirling with possibilities and implications.

“You said others will be looking for me. Why?”

September didn’t answer.

Peter tried to reason through the confusion of September’s words. “I needed to change the future, but not to save the worlds like I assumed. There was something else in another future that needed to change. You were the one who first gave Olivia the drawing of me in the machine. Whatever I undid, you wanted me to be the one to do it. You needed me gone. Why?”

He turned to face September.

“There are others, aren’t there?”

September’s nod was slight. 

“I’m supposed to be gone, wiped out of existence. But you did something. Something that stopped it from happening, and you brought me here. That’s why you can you find me,” Peter mused.

“I can only locate you when you are in this world. Your ability to travel to other universes is outside my sphere of control.” September’s head cocked slightly. “It is only a matter of time before the others realize that I have yet again altered the probabilities to influence the timelines. And they will remedy that before long.”

Peter’s head swam, his bones stiff. “I still don’t understand.”

There was a sudden bite to the air, bringing with it the now-familiar pull in Peter’s abdomen, twisting him subtly inside out and curling his skin.

“I was once saved by Olivia Dunham,” September said as Peter fought to stay. “I grew…attached…to her. To you. To this world. I have witnessed what will happen if you do not return.”

Peter was already a million miles away before he could ask what September what he meant.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With the whole sad Robin Williams thing, I hesitated in posting this chapter at all because of the subject matter. It sat around for a couple days and I really debated whether or not to delete it before I was convinced that it was necessary to the story I wanted to tell. So, with that being said, I want to just share the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline's phone number, 1-800-273-8255, because no one deserves to feel alone.


	7. The Scientist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's always a fallout to every decision, or indecision.

Peter didn’t try to look for Olivia for a long time after he witnessed his mother’s suicide. For reasons he barely understood, he gravitated toward seeking out his pseudo father. Seeing Olivia only dredged up a paralyzing and deep-seeded sense of hopelessness and homesickness that he couldn’t wade out of.  Being with Walter made the feelings easier to articulate, because with Walter it was easier to fall into anger rather than wallow in despair.   

The accommodations inside of Saint Claire’s mental institution were far more depressing than Peter had ever imagined. Not that he’d ever visited outside of that one time when they’d sprung Walter, but wandering around the empty corridors with the sad shuffling bodies of the patients made him feel both isolated and included all at once. It was rather fitting. He never really fit anywhere anyway. Though Peter hadn’t yet mastered his returning sense of smell, there remained the lingering scent of haunted piss that clung to the place like a plague.  

Walter’s signal was easier to discern than Olivia’s, although it still took concentration.  The landscapes unfurled brilliantly, even though it took time and energy all the same. Walter had his own eclectic taste to him, just as Walter always had. Walter was butterscotch pudding and old books and weed. Maybe because he didn’t really want to be in this place, it made it easier to stay. There was never a pull in his gut like when he was with Olivia.   

Peter was surprised at the many versions and adaptations of his father he’d run across; there were Walters without children at all; Walters that were intelligent and cunning and sharp as cut steel but always apathetic and malicious and deeply pitiless. They were in stark contrast to the man Peter remembered as bat-shit insane. It was disillusioning that in the far reaches of all the universes, Walter was far more often cruel than crazy.

After wandering about St. Claire’s for what seemed like an eternity, Peter had a better understanding of why after 17 years, his Walter left this hell hole more of a child than s man. As he learned to better harness the energy away from picking up on the wrong Walters, he found he was brought to this particular Walter more often than the others, which made him hopeful that this was in fact the man he remembered hooking him up to a car battery and making him piss his pants as a kid. Because apparently, that’s passing as a warm and fuzzy memory now.

“Heya Walter,” Peter said from the corner of the shadows inside his father’s cell, his back against the unforgiving brick inside the 12 by 12 that Walter was confined. The room felt like a cross between a morgue and a jail cell.  The only furnishings were restricted to a single twin bed, a toilet with no seat, a stainless-steel sink, and a small stool and desk upon which Peter suspected was an unbreakable mirror. He spent countless hours watching Walter stare silently into that mirror without moving or speaking. It played out like some French farce and it got really disturbing the more Peter watched.

This particular night Peter found Walter boneless on the mattress, his once inquisitive eyes absently staring into the unknown. This Walter was thinner, looked older with a wild, unkempt beard that looked more like animal fur than hair. This was a place that was hard for Peter to come to.

Whenever Peter did come, Walter’s schedule was as tidy as clockwork in every universe. At 6:45 it was breakfast. Sometimes Peter would sit on the opposite side of the old table inside the cafeteria, trying to coax his father into eating the pudding only to feel frustrated when Walter ignored him. Walter just stared at the empty place where Peter sat.

One day Walter looked up at him with almost a look of recognition. “Elizabeth?” he said instead, and then went back to staring through the space that Peter wished he was. Peter didn’t come back for a few days after that.

In the mid-afternoon Walter was allowed outside, and it was the only time that Walter appeared anything other than listless. He was steadfast in sitting on one particular bench, staring out across the courtyard excitedly like someone might visit, although Peter never saw anyone. Sadly, Peter hoped it was because this Walter’s Peter was already dead, and not because they all were as selfish as he had been.

Although it was a difficult place to be, Peter was unable to stay away from this Walter for too long. He knew this one must be the closest to his; there was a certain warmth to him that he instinctively recognized. He was now back again, and Peter figured it must have been late into the night, if Walter’s mental state was any indication. Wednesday. Electroshock therapy day. Walter was particularly lethargic and Peter was feeling particularly bold.

“You know they’re going to keep doing it until you take your meds,” Peter said to his father, who ignored him to stare instead into the lights flickering above them. “You only make it worse with your tantrums. There’s no Astrid here to mix them up with strawberry ice cream, you know.”

Walter continued to ignore him.

“Olivia will be here soon to get you out,” Peter said, hoping he wasn’t lying. “Eventually,” he amended.

The sight of his mother’s dead body still clung tightly in the spaces of Peter’s memory, with every pump of blood in his heart it was all he could see when his eyes closed. But every time Peter came to Walter feeling vengeful or needing to blame him, he felt the halting regret that he had left Walter here for the better part of almost twenty years. It made it harder to be angry.

Peter sat on the lone stool in his father’s room, studying the lines on his father’s face that weren’t obscured with wiry tuffs of hair.

“Tomorrow’s butterscotch pudding if you take your meds like a good little scientist,” Peter said.

Silence. Walter’s heavy breathing a tempo below the humming lights.

“I wish you would have told me the truth about my mother. When you called to tell me she died,” Peter said.  “It must be any time now when they tell you. Or maybe you already know and you’re too whacked out of your mind to understand what it means. Maybe you thought I would blame you…you’d probably be right about that one, but it didn’t give you the right to keep it from me.”

Peter felt the shiver in his spine, the pain in his knees.

“And I _was_ angry at you, for so long, for so many things. For your temper. For your utter disregard for my mother and me. For driving her to kill herself, and lying to me about it,” Peter spoke, projecting what he could toward the broken shell of a man he barely recognized. He rubbed the back of his neck, the muscles impossibly coiled.

“I guess I was angry because you went crazy, really. If I’m being honest.”

There was rustling in the hallway, a scream in the distance that made Peter jump, but not Walter. Peter sighed as he looked anywhere but at his father.

“I guess I was angry at myself too. For leaving her. You were just an easier target, I suppose. Not that you didn’t deserve it, because you did.” Peter felt deeply homesick even though he was now close enough to his father that he could reach out and touch the wiry curls on his head. The silence lingered like an unwelcomed friend.

“I miss her,” Peter finally said. “I miss you too.”

“Peter,” Walter croaked and Peter stiffened. But this wasn’t new; Walter said his name often after he’d have a bad row with his meds. He’d stopped getting his hopes up although it was always a jolt.

“Yeah Walter?” Peter answered anyway.

Walter lifted a shaking hand, pointing to something above them both. “I would very much like to listen to my records,” he said through whatever medicated delusion he was tripping through. “Perhaps some David Bowie? I would very much like to listen to some David Bowie…” he said hopefully.

The rest Peter couldn’t make out. But it struck like an arrow in his chest all the same.

“Sure Walter,” Peter said, “sure.”

But Peter couldn’t call to mind any David Bowie songs. So he sat on the lonely stool throughout the entire darkness of night and sang softly the only song he could think of to comfort his father.

_“Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream…”_


	8. Whispers In the Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Birthday, buddy.

Peter was in a place that he knew instinctively; a place that wasn’t shrouded with darkness and fear and the hopeless dread that he’d become intimately accustomed to. He wasn’t weightless anymore, he was grounded and whole here.

He was with Olivia.

Though it was dark, he wasn’t afraid. He was wrapped up in every corner of Olivia’s skin and bones and she was the anchor keeping him tethered to earth.

_And Christ_ , he missed her. The smell of her skin was earthy and distinctly _Olivia._ Her hair tickled his nose but he buried his face into it like a lovesick child anyway, fingers digging into the curves of her naked shoulders and hoping he wasn’t hurting her because he needed to feel her, and it had been far too long.

This was his favorite place. She was his favorite place.

He knew vaguely he was in her bed, because they both could fit without elbows or knees sticking off the sides of his twin mattress. It smelled like her, _it smelled like him too,_ and that prompted him to shower the skin of her naked throat in open-mouthed kisses that elicited the throaty groan that he loved.

Olivia was food and air and water to him, a man dying of thirst finding a well opening up before him and he drank her in until he was drunk, tasting the tang of her skin and feeling the brace of her hands in his hair.

He didn’t have the slightest idea what he was whispering into her ear, but he knew it was closer to a whimper and filled with all the things he’d wanted to say to her when he had the chance but didn’t. He wasn’t nearly as clever as he’d led her to think, because if he were a smarter man he wouldn’t have wasted all those precious moments without letting her know exactly what she meant to him. He couldn’t bear to leave once again with her unsure of his intentions.

He was deaf and blind, relying solely on touch to guide him.  His stomach hitched when he slid home, feeling her back arch and fingers stamp into his back, the pain beautiful.

_“I love you,”_ he muttered over high breaths as he moved, “ _do you know that?”_ He’d been sitting on those words forever and was rewarded when she grabbed tight to his neck like she was afraid he’d run, which was ridiculous because there wasn’t any place else in the world he wanted to be.

_“Stay,”_ Olivia begged and Peter’s rhythm faltered, his stomach stuttering and for the first time, fear creeping back into his consciousness. “ _Please._ ” She said the words with such raw vulnerability that he didn’t have the heart to tell her he couldn’t.

He pulled back enough to look at her finally, her face bathed in the half-light and she was so beautiful it hurt. He wouldn’t lie to her, so he dipped his head down and pushed on, biting the corner of her mouth as she came in his arms and he blistered and burned to ash around her.

 


	9. Fury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Omniscience really sucks.

Peter let himself drift aimlessly longer than he intended; absent but solid and without any touchstone to cling to because he was pretty sure he was doing himself more harm than good by playing _This Is Your Life_ in 3D, up close and personal.

He still wasn’t sure if his time with Olivia had been a fantasy or dream; he couldn’t stop thinking about it but he knew it was probably more wistful hope than anything real, and that made him feel even more ill. He swore he could still smell her on his skin as he wandered the streets of this universe as a ghost, people from all walks of life passing through him carelessly. Omniscience really sucked.

_“Stay,”_ she had said, although he decided it couldn’t possibly have been directed to him. He missed Olivia, in all of her pantsuited no nonsense glory. Having her that close was painful. Every time he caught glimpse of blonde hair he always stopped in his tracks.

It was never Olivia.

He dredged himself through what he assumed was a New York very much like the one he’d once known, but he didn’t bother to investigate as he wandered the streets, downcast and passing through solemn, irritable people that wouldn’t have looked at him even if he were actually there. He wandered for a long time through the gloom because it matched his darkening mood, and there was a decidedly depressing feeling to this place.

“My people,” Peter deadpanned as he passed through an exasperated woman trying to pull a leashed pair of reluctant white dogs along the sidewalk behind her.

Out of the corner of his eye he caught the glint of blonde hair of a woman walking away from him, and for a moment he let himself feel the same naive spark of hope that he always did before chiding himself for being foolish. The woman turned back, looking behind her at someone Peter couldn’t see. She bent down for a moment and rose with a flaxen-haired toddler hauled to her hip and then continued along her way, heading down the street.

He shook his head and decided to not torture himself any longer, extinguishing Olivia’s flame and packing it away in the small hollows of his chest, too heartbroken to look for her.

He went a long time without trying to find her.  

He resolved to sing to Walter every night for what felt like months after that, because he didn’t know what else he was supposed to do. Walter slept without rambling for half the night on the nights that he visited. Peter wondered if he was any different on the days he didn’t come.

In the back of his mind, he knew the others September had warned him about would be searching for him, even if he didn’t have the faintest idea why. Being with Walter gave him a level of routine that was comforting, even if it was far more self-destructive.

But he couldn’t stay away from Olivia forever, and the internal compass he had for her finally pulled him out of his wallowing. He let himself drift away from Walter and opened himself up to look for her again.

Now Peter pushed forward, letting the weightlessness propel him someplace new, and he felt the tendrils of this new universe wrap around his skin. Olivia was on his tongue and he let it guide him through the maze of realities, hoping he’d get to see her face.

He landed softly inside a house. It was well kept and tidy, but wasn’t any place he recognized.

“Where am I this time?” he said, realizing it had been a long time since he’d said words that didn’t involve rowing a boat. He roamed about openly in the living room, looking for a hint of why he’d come here. “Olivia?” he called out, expecting her to roll around the corner any moment.

The picture frame that was perched over the fireplace mantel stopped him cold. The hair on his neck stood on end like he’d just been hit with a jolt of electricity.

The woman in the picture had a tight smile and dark, curly hair that fell over her shoulders. For a moment, Peter couldn’t figure out why he recognized her. But he instantly knew the man she was standing next to.

“Oh God,” Peter grunted as he backed away from the photo. “Why here?”

Peter knew why he didn’t recognize the house. He hadn’t been the one who had been here before.

“Olivia Dunham is in our house,” Samantha Loeb’s urgent voice was low enough that if he hadn’t been nearly omniscient, he would have missed it. He pushed through the wall into the kitchen to see the woman from the picture speaking into the phone. He barely recognized her without the bullet wound that Olivia had blasted through her forehead.

“Stop,” Peter snarled at her. Loeb made no indication that she heard him. Peter’s heart started hammering, blood pumping as he watched the conversation play out. He felt the heat in his limbs, the anger boiling as she and her husband conspired to kill Olivia.

“There has to be another way to do this,” Samantha hushed into the receiver and Peter saw red.

“I said stop!” Peter lurched for the phone, but his hand coasted through Samantha like he was made of air. As angry as he was, he still didn’t exist. She didn’t even bat an eye. Peter grunted in frustration. He turned on his heels and was catapulted upstairs, flickering in and out of existence before he stumbled hard into the room to find Olivia shuffling through papers on a roll-top desk, completely unaware of the danger that was conspiring below.

“Call her,” Peter snarled, bouncing on the balls of his feet as Olivia continued to unsuspectingly gather evidence. He remembered the exact moment that he’d burst in on Loeb’s phone call after placing Charlie’s illegal wiretap on it. This is where he had called to warn her. Now.

Nothing happened.

“Damn it, CALL HER. Where ARE YOU?” he railed, but there was no phone call. Maybe there was no Peter in this world. Maybe Charlie was already dead so there was no one to tip Peter off. Maybe Olivia’s phone was on silent. Peter knew there were millions of possibilities that could be playing out. September had warned him as much. Peter’s gut tightened angrily and he spiraled into panic.

“Olivia!” he shouted in vain as he tried to grab hold of her arms while she read through the files on the giant slug that Peter didn’t give a shit about. His hands slipped easily through hers and the heat boiled in his ears. He got in her way; willed her to see him. He reached for her, tried to touch her. He concentrated all his energy to feel the warmth of her cheek, hoping to pull some reaction out of her.

“Olivia, listen to me, okay? You have to listen me! That woman downstairs is going to come up here and she is going to kill you. If you have any sense of anything being wrong, anything at all, you will take out your gun and you will defend yourself!” Peter was screaming madly in Olivia’s face, swiping angrily at her and feeling the disparaging hole overtaking him when he couldn’t do anything.

“Do _SOMETHING_!” Peter continued, fury engulfing everything as he stormed after Olivia as she moved away from him to clean up.

“Olivia, the tea’s ready,” Samantha Loeb’s voice called from below, and he flickered out of the room to see Loeb climbing the stairs, gun in hand, finger on the trigger. He breathed in hard and tried to do something, anything: he screamed, he pushed and thrashed, he concentrated every fiber of his being into making her burst into flames. He focused all his strength and willed her to creak a floorboard, to sneeze, fall to her death, ANYTHING.

He flickered back to Olivia, the room back in order, her face perfectly passive.

“Please, Olivia, do something,” he begged, feeling himself vibrating, his arms stinging and voice strained. “She is going to kill you! Is that what you want?”

“I can’t watch this again.” Peter lamented.

But nothing worked.

“Coming,” Olivia said but didn’t move; something had caught her eye and she stopped short. Peter prayed that she felt something was off. He watched Olivia approach a framed picture on the wall and he held his breath. She tilted her head, face surprised as she reached out to touch whatever it was that she thought she saw reflected on its surface.

Holy shit. She saw him, maybe just a shadow or a ghost, but _goddamn it_ she saw something.

“It’s me! Olivia, it’s me,” Peter yelled, approaching her wildly and Olivia cocked her head.

But nothing else happened because the door creaked open just then, and she didn’t stand a chance.

“Olivia,” Samantha Loeb said, and Olivia barely turned before Loeb pulled the trigger and the gun discharged to the sound of thunder.

“NOOOOOOO!” Peter shouted and tried to throw himself in front of Olivia, but the bullet passed harmlessly through him and snapped Olivia’s head back with such force that it threw her into the wall behind her.

For the blink of an eye, Olivia looked at him like she could finally see him, and then her eyes rolled backward. She slumped to her knees and fell lifeless at his feet.

Peter couldn’t speak, paralyzed by the debilitating anger speeding through his veins. Everything exploded into a fiery hot rage. “Olivia,” he ground out as he took all his fury and focused all his emotion into each and every finger as he curled them.

He snapped. He was vengeance and hellfire, a fiery column of impossibly hot energy.

He couldn’t watch Olivia die again.

He thought of his mother.

He saw Walter’s lifeless eyes staring into the mirror.

He had enough. He curled his hand into a fist and burrowed it into the goddamned picture frame splattered with her blood with every ounce of rage he had.

He was surprised when he heard shattered glass and felt the pain in his still curled fist.

“Jesus,” Peter panted, feeling the fury prickle into shock as he stared at his own hand and felt heat against his knuckles as shattered glass from the photo fell to the ground.

The surprise overwhelmed him and he didn’t even have a moment to process what had happened before the invisible pull dragged him away and back into the darkness.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the big lapses in time between chapters. Writing time travel/parallel universes really takes it out of a gal. You'll be happy (or maybe not so happy) to know that the end of this story is written out and we're slowly inching our way to it. A million thanks to She Who Shall Not Be Named for the constantly harassment and reminders to stop dicking around and finish this.


	10. Life on Earth

There was still a fire raging in Peter’s chest as he rematerialized from his excursion in the previous reality. Olivia’s face blurred in watercolor as he came to, the look of recognition she had given him seconds before her eyes fell lifeless replaying in his mind. 

He’d been ripped too quickly from the Loeb home to process how he’d actually interacted with his surroundings, but as he opened his eyes to survey his new surroundings, the memory of what had happened still clung to him. His fist burned and he could feel the ribbons of blood drying on his skin.

When he sensed the sun on his face, some of the gloom escaped him in spite of what he had just witnessed.  He allowed himself to hope that he might have found a way to break through, and it made him more determined than ever to find a way back to his Olivia.

He stood up and gazed across a landscape that occupied a large chunk of his childhood memories, one not always filled with positive associations. He recognized the lake, even without the sheet of ice that usually covered it when he recalled it most vividly in his dreams.

Peter stood just on the cusp of Reiden Lake. There was a breeze in the air, and with it came the smell of the lake, a murky, musty smell that Peter would never have thought he would savor, because as a kid it always reminded him of his loneliness.

As it happened, Peter found that he wasn’t alone in this familiar place.

Not twenty yards away stood two people he knew well. He approached slowly, but excitedly, and watched Nina Sharp’s hair flash in bright contrast to Broyles’ stoic stare.

“Do you know where we are?” Nina asked as Peter drew closer.

“Should I?” Broyles responded, and a bit of wind bit coldly against Peter’s neck. Peter could taste the tension that hung in the air between the two; at least some things stayed the same regardless whatever universe he was in.

“I trust you are informed about the events involving the Pattern?” Nina asked instead of answering Broyles’ question. Peter’s ears pricked up.

“What does Nina know about the Pattern?” Peter said to Broyles, immediately taking his side in this conversation.  Broyles confirmed Nina’s question with an annoyed nod, “I was asked to coordinate the Fringe Division from Homeland Security in response to the unexplained phenomena caused by the Pattern,” Broyles answered, clearly not impressed at her attempt at subterfuge.

Peter glared back at Nina.

“Then you know that we’re standing in the original Zero Event zone,” Nina continued, and for the first time Peter noticed the little squab of a scientist Brandon off to the side, looking awkwardly into the distance as Nina and Broyles talked in short, clipped sentences.

“Oh hey Brandon. Almost missed you there,” Peter said conversationally. “What’s going on here?”

Brandon continued to ignore Peter, so he swiveled his attention back to Nina as her voice lowered. “They’re reverting. The soft spots, the membrane of our universe is thinning,” she said.

Peter whistled. Broyles didn’t respond, not for a while. Peter looked from Nina to Broyles, seeing who’d break first.

It was Broyles. “And the other universe? Are their soft spots thinning as well?”

_Now that was interesting. So the other universe was still around in this reality._

“Toto, I think we may be back in Kansas,” Peter said to no one. Maybe he was getting better at navigating than he thought.

Nina spoke over him. “No. They’re the same as they were. It appears that whatever’s happening, however these soft spots are reoccurring, is only happening on our side.”

Peter gulped. A sickening feeling curled at the bottom of his stomach. Peter tried to stare out over the familiar lake, tried to see any thinning, the memory of the universe collapsing and the vortexes opening still pungent. But this world didn’t look any different, everything looked as it should have. It gave him a haunting feeling.

“What are you saying?” Broyles asked.

Peter had never trusted Nina, partially because he recognized the wolf in sheep’s clothing mentality that he also had buried in himself. Nina was always just a bit too polished; too refined for his liking.

“The soft spots that we’ve been able to track are unlike the parameters of what we’ve experienced in the past. Some are the same consistency as before, but the clustering is very…unique. And we can’t posit why some previous locations are being affected but others aren’t.”

“Like here,” Broyles filled in, and Peter began to feel sick.

At this point Brandon rejoined the conversation.

“Technically about two miles out in the direction of the lake. The spot is a good quarter-mile in diameter. At least based on what our calculations are showing.”

Peter was already a few steps ahead, feeling the knot in his stomach clench impossibly tighter. He knew the exact location Brandon was referring to, even though he didn’t maintain a recollection of the event itself, like most of the traumatic shit he went through as a child.  He knew the story second-hand.  This was where Walter had brought him over from his own universe. Where the ice failed and he and Walter had plunged into the icy water. But that couldn’t have happened now in this world; he didn’t exist here. It didn’t make sense.

Peter was startled out of his musing as a laser shot through him and beamed out over the lake while Brandon warned, “Don’t shine this in your eyes.” Peter suppressed the urge to knock the laser out of Brandon’s hand and elected to move out of the direct path it, because even though he didn’t technically exist he still didn’t want to risk exposure to whatever shit a Massive Dynamic laser emanated.

Peter turned to observe the direction the laser beam cut through; and he went from feeling sick to turning green. He knew where this was going.

He caught the tail end of Brandon’s explanation. “Light rays passing close to an object will be refracted somewhere else. That’s how we know something is there—we can see it bending light.”

“Einstein,” Peter muttered, feeling smug if he wasn’t busy feeling sick.

“It’s an effect of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Pretty cool, huh?” Brandon added, and Peter smirked. But he didn’t lose sight of the direction of the light; already having hypothesized what he was going to see. Walter would have been proud. If only his end hypothesis didn’t mean something catastrophic.

“It’s a black hole,” Peter mumbled, watching as the light bent in on itself, swirling quietly in mid air. “That’s bad. That’s real bad,” he muttered as a new, terrifying idea struck him. “This doesn’t make sense—Walter said that the other universe had to survive in order for us to survive. So why is there still ongoing degradation?”

Peter felt tremors in his hand and the familiar pull in his stomach, but it was unlike the normal tether he’d grown accustomed to. This time it was like being electrified, but slowly, on low current.

He dug his feet into this world, wanting to stay. The voltage ratcheted up and he had to let go for a moment when the feeling became overwhelming. He suddenly blinked out and disappeared, but then ground his way back, his spine still rumbling with the shock of electricity.

This time he found Broyles and Nina standing closer to their cars, Nina handing a parchment to Broyles.

Peter craned his neck around Broyles’ shoulders to see what he was staring at with wide eyes and a downturned mouth.

“Tell me you have a picture of me strapped to the machine,” Peter muttered, “tell me you know that I exist somewhere!” His excitement returned.

But Peter saw it wasn’t the picture of him he’d expected.

It was Olivia.

It was her face, head bowed down and hair flowing off the edge of the crumpled paper, her coded DNA scratched in behind her. He remembered Walter explaining the drawing, discussing how Olivia would be the failsafe.

“When the time comes, you’re going to need to make some very difficult decisions,” Nina said as her mouth curled.

“And Olivia?” Broyles said.

“You need to decide what’s more important. The world’s survival, or Olivia Dunham’s.”

Peter was incredulous. “Olivia hasn’t anything to do with the machine,” Peter snarled in Broyles direction. “DO NOT let Nina put her in that thing. You know that’s what she’s suggesting. There’s another drawing! Ask her about it!” Peter tried to reach for the paper to shred it between his fingers. His hands passed right through it.

The particles of the world around Peter suddenly began to slowly peel apart like ash, and Peter felt the pull and knew he wouldn’t be able to resist it this time. With the force of the pull acting on him, he struggled to remain rooted where he was, but there was an overwhelming heat in his chest that almost made his knees buckle under the pain. It wasn’t the usual sensation he had gotten accustomed to, this time it was like being struck by lightning. It was the same sensation he remembered when he first stepped into the machine. His veins pulsed against the skin in his arms, but he fought to stay.

“Broyles, listen to me. If you let her go into that machine, it will kill her. It wasn’t made for her. Find the other drawing!” The pull was persistent. His stomach roared. And then Peter saw something across the lake shore the others had not. A man in a black suit and a fedora stood solemn against the wind, his mouth pulled down in disappointment as he looked at Peter thrashing against the pull.

Peter could tell from where he stood that the man wasn’t September. Real fear startled him against fighting.

“ _They won’t be happy that you’ve returned.”_ September’s warning haunted him.

“This has to do with the Observers. It has to!” Peter yelled to an unaware Broyles, and he’d barely gotten the last word out before it felt like a crowbar hit him across the chest hard enough to throw him into blackness, and for once, Peter was glad he was being pulled away.


	11. The Man Who Sold the World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are getting very twisty.

Peter was once again hauled along for another nauseating trip in the sidecar that had become his life, feeling himself being ripped apart and stitched back together one neuron at a time, with no idea where he was getting pulled and no control over his body as the breath in his lungs was sucked out through a garden hose and his skull was squeezed in a vise.

Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, all the pressure lifted and he was again whole. He hit the ground hard like he’d fallen out of a roller coaster halfway through the first loop.

He felt unattached and weightless, but his chest burned and the shock in his spine made him feel like a live wire. He did his normal routine upon finding himself in a strange and unfamiliar place: he looked for landmarks, zeppelins, the Statue of Liberty, Zakim Bridge, anything that might help anchor him to where he was.

But he was in a vast, empty space, only it wasn’t so much empty as it was just devoid of everything. Peter was completely surrounded by blackness as limitless as the entire universe and he felt that enormity from where he stood.

“Hello?” he said, his voice echoing into the distance. There was no internal pull on him here, he felt grounded as he wandered around in blackness. As he began to explore, a faint, dawning light appeared from the horizon and he noticed the outlines of objects floating in the space around him like they were trapped in zero gravity while he remained safely rooted. In the distance he could also hear sound, faintly, but it was there. It was music. It was too far away for him to catch more than a hushed whisper of a lyric.

This place was definitely unsettling, he thought, and unlike anywhere else he’d been so far. “Did I run out of universes to explore?” he said as a joke, but stopped himself short.

Wait. This did feel familiar. He’d been here before, when he’d first been lost to the Machine, hadn’t he?  But it felt off, not at all the same. This wasn’t his memory, he decided, and he could feel as much as he stepped around a floating object, an old picture frame with images that were too blurry to make out. Everything around him felt out of focus, like a hazy and forgotten memory. He could now see the shapes of people in the distance, but their faces were lost to the same fog. Slowly, buildings began to come into focus and the space grew up around him.

He plucked from the air another close object, a postcard that was by far the most distinct item he’d seen so far. He turned it over to read it. _“Thinking About You”,_ he read aloud, but it didn’t hold any significance to him so he let it go and allowed it to drift away.

None of the objects held any significance for him, and the unfamiliar people were merely part of the background. He began to feel a sense of panic, but then saw the Empire State building grow in the distance, and he could only watch in wonder as he finally felt a spark of familiarity.  The space around him slowly continued coming into distinction, and he tested to see if he was controlling anything, thinking to Olivia to see if he’d recognize the spark in his chest.

“What the hell?” Peter grumbled, but it was hard to not be fascinated. _Where was he?_  He then remembered the Observer standing across from him at Reiden Lake, and he felt even more uncomfortable lingering here. Had they found him?

“Are you out there?” he shouted in frustration out towards the rapidly growing city that ignored him as it continued to materialize.  “If you brought me here, might as well get this over with!”

No one responded. A sun split the sky and filled the space with full light, people now starting to litter the streets surrounding him. Some of their faces were well defined, others still impossibly blurred even though they were walking shoulder to shoulder with one another.

He caught a glimpse of silver salt-and-pepper hair and recognized Walter standing in the distance, and he was struck by a ray of hope.

“Walter!” Peter shouted as he navigated through the growing throngs of people that were appearing. He didn’t pass through them as he’d expected to; instead he got sharp shoulders from the more distinct people and soft pushes from those who were blurry.

Walter didn’t take any notice of him from where he was standing despite all the shouting Peter was doing, so Peter began to run towards him, ignoring the outraged looks from those he bumped into.  But he came to a scathing halt when suddenly the Machine erupted from the ground in front of him, unearthing pavement and dirt with a horrifying grinding noise as it rose almost as high as the Empire State Building, blotting out the sun.

“Christ,” Peter said, and for the first time, everyone stopped. Like little soldiers all in rows, shoulders lined up and heads swiveling towards him.  He felt hot in the face. An itch began under his skin, and with it a feeling of recognition that he couldn’t shake. He back peddled from where he stood, taking refuge at a safer distance behind a car that looked suspiciously like Walter’s old ’72 Vista Cruiser.

And suddenly he knew exactly where he was.

“This is Olivia’s mind,” he marveled. He recalled stomping around in her head when she’d been invaded by Bell: Walter by his side as he tried hard not to kick anything loose. But Olivia wasn’t lost now. And he certainly hadn’t taken any LSD.

“Olivia?” he called cautiously, not wanting to attract the vaguely menacing attention of the crowd again. As soon as he said her name, the world vanished like a puff of smoke, including the car he was crouching behind.

He had returned to the blackness.

_“Olivia, can you hear me?”_ a voice asked from the nothingness.

It was Walter’s voice. Peter sprang up.

“Walter! Can you hear me?” Peter resisted waving his hands around like he was hailing a passing plane.

_“Yes,”_ Olivia’s voice echoed and Peter was spinning.

“I’m here!” Peter shouted, desperate for them to hear him.

He was being ignored.

_“I’ll be your tether, Olivia. Listen to the sound of my voice and my voice only. I’ll guide you safely through the dreamscape…”_

Peter broke into a run, not knowing which direction he was going, fury pumping in his veins.

“YOU PUT HER IN THE GODDAMNED TANK, WALTER?” Peter shouted in disbelief into the blackness. He tried to formulate theories as he ran, ignoring the very real sting in his hand where the blood rushed too quickly to the broken skin. It had felt like only moments ago that he’d watched Samantha Loeb put a bullet in Olivia’s brain, and now here she was alive and whole again, letting Walter put a metal probe in her brain.

Peter heard piano notes in the distance, the sounds too soft and gentle for him to recognize but he stopped hard and turned towards the direction the melody was drifting from.

_“I’m in the lab. After I returned. I’m home,”_ Olivia’s voice trilled over the music and Peter stopped again and listened to see which direction to run. He wasn’t even sure if he was really moving through this landscape. But she was here, somewhere. He could find her.

The music got louder, each key strike lighting up flashes in the sky. “I know this song!” he shouted to her. “I played this for you, remember?”

Excitement erupted throughout his body. He thought of her face, leaning over the piano, obviously impressed upon learning of his unknown skill.

He remembered how much he liked impressing her.

_“Dunham, any requests?”_ he had asked. As soon as he thought the words in his head, his own voice ignited the sky in stereo.

_“How ‘bout some Bach?” she answered._

_“Bach, no, that’s way too stuffy,” he’d teased, playing Gershwin for her instead._ His own voice reverberated through the darkness and he took pause. Was she seeing this? Did that mean she was remembering him? There was a flush to his chest in excitement but his stomach ached. They were just words for now.

He began sprinting again towards Olivia’s voice, his brain trying desperately hard to piece together what was happening.

_She’s in the tank. He must be clinging somewhere in the recesses of Olivia’s mind. She was remembering._

But just like that, everything suddenly changed. The blackness was still there, but it was like running through cobwebs, the sticky stretching strands slowing him until he stopped altogether. There was something new here now. Something that hadn’t been here before.

The Machine stood brilliant against the dark skies, and he hesitated, confused.

Then he saw her.

Walter’s voice weathered on through the darkness. _“Olivia, listen to me. Tell me what you see.”_   

Olivia stood a short distance away, her traditional black armor and grey scarf twisting around her throat, her badge clipped neatly on the lapel. Peter felt such a rush of relief that he didn’t even consider making fun of the fact that even her dream self wore that damn uniform.

She was just perfectly Olivia, her blonde hair and porcelain face upturned, eyes wide and frightened as she looked at the Machine.

“I’m with the Machine,” Olivia answered without looking towards Peter where he now stood. He took a few cautious steps toward her.

“Why am I here?” fear laced her words.

“Remember me, Olivia,” Peter whispered.

_“It’s somehow significant to your subconscious, Olivia,”_ Walter’s voice answered, _“you must decipher its meaning.”_

Peter smiled. He couldn’t help it. She was so close.

“That’s right, Agent Dunham,” Peter suddenly heard his own voice echoing out from inside the Machine’s belly. Both their heads swiveled at his voice and Peter could now see himself interlocked within the Machine, the abuse on his face from when he’d been launched out of the Machine at first go still obvious, yet there he was, cocky and grinning.

Had he really looked like that big of an asshole?

“This place _is_ significant. Why?” Peter watched himself ask.

“I don’t know,” Olivia begged. The Machine whirled brutally, and she walked towards it. Peter took two steps in her direction, but she studiously ignored him, focused on the shadow of his own image trapped in the Machine instead.  

“Tell me,” she said, and Peter longed for her to recognize him.

“I’m here, Olivia,” he tried again, and resolved to reach out and touch her. But on the next step he felt a _whoosh_ and he blinked out of existence. When he reappeared, he was now trapped in the Machine, hands and feet immobilized and staring down at a very wide-eyed Olivia.

_“Who are you speaking to, Olivia?”_ Walter’s ethereal voice startled Peter out of his momentary confusion at finding himself in this new predicament. From the way Olivia was raking her eyes over his features, Peter knew she recognized him.

“It’s him. Here’s here too,” she said hesitantly, and Peter felt his cheeks split with excitement.

_“Who is?”_ Peter could almost imagine Walter scratching his head in confusion, pretzel crumbs stuck to his tongue.

Peter willed her to say his name and _goddamn it,_ to remember him!But a bolt of energy drove itself straight up his spine and he heard Walter’s voice instead.

_“Olivia, who is he?”_

From his angle he saw Olivia reach out to him, but he was unable to warn her.

She touched the Machine and everything went white.

Peter was trapped in his own body, slowly charring into cinders as his body erupted in fire while the machine whirled to life, and although he knew he was trapped as an image in Olivia’s mind, the pain wasn’t dulled. His limbs shook and he tried to shout out for her, but his lips pulled back and his jaw clenched.

Then he saw her: an explosion of Olivia. Every memory he ever had spilling out of him like blood from a severed femoral artery.

He remembered her face when he first set eyes on her in Baghdad, following her into St. Claire’s to spring his father, bringing her cups of coffee where he’d always snuck in an extra packet of sugar, her amused voice when he’d argue with Walter in the lab, her hesitation and fear when he’d climbed into the Machine…he felt every roll of emotion he’d ever had for her as each memory was pulled from him.

_“I care about you,”_ he’d said aloud without meaning to, shocked at her callous reaction to being kidnapped, and feeling Walter’s gaze on his neck.

_“You belong with me,”_ she’d said when she’d jumped universes to rescue him, and with that hesitant first kiss had chipped away at his incensed betrayal.

_“I love you.”_ His favorite.  She’d said those words, and he knew she meant them, even though he knew he was about to die. He tried to open his mouth to say them back, wanted so desperately to let her know this time, but the memory had already flickered and disappeared behind the millions of other images and thoughts and emotions that were careening in his brain and about to cause his skull to dissolve.

The pain undulated and taxed his system to the point that even though he could still hear words, but could no longer understand them over the growing roar in his ears.

And then he was lost in the great white light that grew so ferociously it engulfed them all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rest in Peace, Spock.


	12. Get Back

There was no air. No oxygen left in the world to breathe. His lungs were on fire as they dredged through nothingness, trying to sustain him. He was dying. He felt it.

There was no reprieve from the emptiness.

_Breathe…_

He begged, nothing happened.

BREATHE!

Peter awoke with a start, hot and sucking in great mouthfuls of air, his head spinning. He felt the sweat stinging his eyes, and as he moved to wipe his face he found his hand covered in sand.

He lay there gasping, and once he’d breathed in so much air that he began to feel dizzy, he slowly sat up and looked at his surroundings. He was on the coast of a small shore next to the water. The sun was fresh and warm on his face and the tang of salt was on his lips, just as he remembered when they’d come here during the summers.

“Olivia?” he tried, his voice hoarse.  Why was he here? He turned and saw the familiar cottage in the distance. He dug his fingers into the damp sand, the images of Olivia’s face burnt into his retinas. He was in her mind. How? Everything was vivid and blurred at the same time.

“We are in Grafton,” an inflectionless voice said behind him and Peter groaned in frustration. “I thought this would be a fitting place to bring you.”

“Great,” Peter grumbled as he pulled himself upright. September stood tall, the wind silently fluttering through his suit.

“You brought me here, then? Any more dead family members you’d like to parade around in front of me?” Peter’s knees barely held his weight, leaving him crouched, his spine bent and barely holding him. His chest burned.

“You were warned,” September said evenly, hands folded neatly. “You have been careless.”

Peter stretched the kinks out of his back, head throbbing. The smell of the ocean hit him like a memory.

“I saw her. I was in Olivia’s mind. She found me.” Peter said, attempting to control his excitement.

Every memory he’d ever had of her bled through, and he knew— _he knew_ —she now felt it too.

“She was always meant to. But she is not the only one who has found you,” September replied, looking severe.

Peter squinted, watching the last of the sun’s rays dying out over the ocean as the air took on a chill.

“There was a man,” Peter thought back to Reiden Lake, “another one. Like you. He was watching me before I was wrenched away. He was staring at me. He saw me.”

“You have been discovered,” September confirmed.

“Fantastic,” Peter deadpanned. He rubbed the nape of his neck as his temples flared and his stomach churned. His skin felt fragile, like it might blow away like grains of sand if he moved too quickly.

“Can I ask you something?” Peter said, his back to the Observer as he looked wistfully towards the beach cottage where Walter used to surprise him with pancakes shaped like whales.

When the Observer didn’t offer any objection, Peter glanced back to make sure he hadn’t disappeared.

“Why do they care if I return or not? I’ve averted the future I saw in the Machine. You made sure of that,” Peter said.

September stared at Peter in inscrutable silence.

“You’ve been manipulating me. Manipulating Walter. Everything. Since the day you pulled us from the frozen lake. _Give me the keys and save the girl_ _._ I said those words to Walter. Those words that you knew I’d say. To see if he’d let me go. Let me die. Well, he did. And I was supposed to die. But I’m not dead. Why?”

September’s mouth turned down into a slight frown. Peter’s was deeper.

“Why do you care if I’m discovered now? Why do _they_ care? What’s so terrible about Peter Bishop slinking back into a universe that doesn’t want him?”

The sun waned to a sliver, throwing the shoreline into a brilliant tangerine relief. The descending chill made the hair on Peter’s neck stand on end as he tried not to shiver.

September tilted his head and locked eyes with Peter. “Saving you and your father at Reiden Lake wasn’t the first time I interfered. It should have been the last. But it was done, and I had to amend for my mistake. I have been trying to amend for that mistake for a very, very long time.”

“What mistake?” Peter asked.

“I wanted to bear witness, to see the exact moment in history it happened. But I acted…carelessly.  I was seen, and as a consequence I altered the course of history.”

“What moment?” Peter’s interest overlapped his frustration.

“The moment your father discovered the cure for your illness. But I interrupted him before he could realize that he had discovered the cure for his son’s ailment. This gave rise to a series of developments that I could not have foreseen, and as a result I altered the future in ways that I could not have predicted.”

Peter shook his head in anger. “But why did I have to be saved? There was a perfectly sick little Peter Bishop in _this_ universe that you could have saved instead. Then Walter would never have crossed over, and the worlds never would’ve been linked. I hate to break it to you, but you saved the wrong kid.” 

Peter had never once voiced those thoughts aloud. Not to his father, not to Olivia.

Peter’s tirade hung in the salty air. September’s forehead furrowed.

“You are incorrect. I have seen that future as well. One in which a different Peter survives,” September began, turning to the horizon and away from Peter. “Imagine this. Here, Walter Bishop’s son is cured and grows into adulthood. Yet in spite of this, your father’s hubris and obsession with the other universe still progresses as it always does, and he continues his work unchecked. It is his nature. He still crosses over, stealing advanced technology instead of a son. In every timeline, Walter Bishop from one world _always_ crosses over to the other world, linking the universes. With dire consequences for both. The actions of this Walter Bishop lead to war between the universes as they always do, and he creates the Machine to destroy the other world. He ties it to his son’s genetic code, and the Peter Bishop from this world steps into it to destroy the other universe. He succeeds.”    

Peter was taken aback. It was bizarre to think of the other Peter surviving, he thought. Growing up in this world. Would this Peter have met this Olivia? _His_ Olivia? Would Walter have still gone crazy? _Maybe going crazy made Walter a better father,_ Olivia had told him once, after they’d discovered that pieces of Walter’s brain were missing. Would he still have lost his sanity if Peter had survived?

“Yes. Removing those parts of his brain are what changed the course of his decision making,” September answered, even though Peter hadn’t spoken aloud. “It is only when this Walter loses his son and takes you from the other universe that a pivotal shift occurs. His altered mental abilities cause him to look for other alternatives to war, to make other choices. Once that occurs, there is a fundamental change in the branching of events, and new choices unfurl that do not always lead to destruction of the universes.”

“The Peter Bishop from this world was always meant to die. You were not,” September concluded solemnly.

Peter had a sudden thought that left him cold. “Did they…” Peter hesitated, “did _they_ kill this Peter on purpose? Give him a disease Walter couldn’t possibly cure?”

September didn’t answer and Peter felt sick.

September pressed on. “This world was the one you were destined to be in. To meet this Olivia Dunham. But because of mistakes of the past, your timeline was altered and our future was imperiled.”

Peter’s stomach dropped. His back tightened. He hunched over, hands on knees.

“I’ve seen that future you’re talking about. It’s the one where I destroy the other universe and my father murders my wife. You’re telling me that piece of shit future isn’t what you wanted either?”

“No. It would have been the end of our civilization as well. That particular future died out when you stepped into the Machine and chose to unite the two worlds. It was never supposed to come to pass.”

Peter huffed. Olivia’s dead face haunted him when he closed his eyes and his stomach lurched.

“Beg your pardon,” Peter hissed, hands still on his knees, “but I don’t give a shit about your goddamned future. The only thing I cared about was saving Olivia. Not about you or the world. If my purpose was to change that future for you, and I did it, then why do you care whether or not I survive?”

September’s face glowed white against the last rays of the sun being swallowed by the sea.

“You’re important to her,” September answered simply.

Peter had a thought. “You convinced Walter to let me die. To let me step foot into the Machine even though it was supposed to kill me. Will you do the same with Olivia? Convince her to let me go?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because your child is equally important to the future.”

Peter felt like he had been struck by lightning.

“My _what?”_

A memory struck Peter. Something that hadn’t made sense to him before. On a rooftop a million years ago.

“You said once…that it was difficult…being a father. Right before you shot me. I had assumed you were talking about Walter. You weren’t, were you?”

September’s eyes twinkled. “No.”

Peter’s fingers raked through is hair, his vision spotty. His head swirled. He breathed deeply. A child. _A fucking child._

“Shit,” he muttered. “SHIT. I don’t understand. You manipulated me into that Machine to change a future you didn’t want. Well, congratulations, I’ve done that. How is it I’m supposed to have a kid when I don’t exist anymore?”

September looked at the horizon, though Peter could barely see against the brilliance of the dying light. It appeared not to affect the other man at all.

“Your child proves to be a great threat to the future they wish to bring about.”

“That future is gone.”

“Yes. We had to eliminate _that_ future so that our kind could survive. The future that you eliminated was one that was unable to sustain us. It died out soon after the other world was destroyed.”

September turned to face Peter. “The moment Walter crosses over, in every timeline, he binds the worlds forever and ensures your survival. It is your survival that creates the link. Yet the worlds must be unlinked in order for them to survive. Your survival ensures that they will remain unlinked.”

“DAMN IT!” Peter roared in frustration, unable to process September’s circular words. “I don’t care! Why are you telling me this? What happens if they find me? They should be throwing a goddamn parade in my honor for fixing your mistakes! I saved the world! Both of them! Now you tell me they want me to disappear? I haven’t gone through enough shit in my life that I have to save the world but not live in it? You should have just left me die in that Machine!”

September was unimpressed by Peter’s outburst. “That could not be allowed to come to pass, either. Before you entered the Machine, you had another child. A child that was never supposed to exist. A child much like yourself.”

Peter’s blood ran cold, awash with feelings he didn’t understand. His knees faltered and he buckled into the sand.

“No,” Peter argued.

“Yes. A son. A boy born to the wrong Olivia Dunham. Your son.”

That was enough. Peter’s memory suddenly flared. An image of a young child wrapped in Olivia’s arms, his child. It was all wrong though. Her hair was red, her smile tilted into a scowl. He couldn’t remember what the boy looked like. His boy. His son. His vision blurred. It couldn’t be…

“He didn’t survive?” Peter asked, the bile rising in his chest.

“He was not meant to. That timeline was eliminated.”

Peter laughed angrily, his thumbs pressing deeply into the bridge of his nose. Breathing in and out.

“I did it. I eliminated that timeline. I erased my son.”

“Yes.”

“And now you’re telling me that I’m supposed to have another one? And the thought of that small child makes your people, what? Shake in your suits? This is why I can’t return?”

The sun disappeared, the blackness overwhelming. Peter no longer felt the sun or the sand at his feet. The world was fading away, only shadowed outlines remained.

“It is vital that you do return. You must,” September urged, “because she will not forget you.”

“How? And why are you telling me this if I’m such a threat to your kind? Why do you care?” Peter yelled, feeling the pull in his gut, the pressure building on all sides. He was already disappearing.

“Because I was also a child who was never supposed to survive, due to actions I would take the future. But I was rescued. As you were when you were a child, and as your child shall be upon your return. I survived, and because of that I owe her a debt I intend to repay.”

“Who?” Peter called to the man.

He looked to the man, already blotted out against the almost complete darkness. He was suddenly reminded of a small boy. A boy trapped in a building that was about to explode, a thin boy dressed in Olivia’s Northwestern t-shirt that Walter played his records for when he wouldn’t speak. It was the last thought Peter had before he disappeared completely from the shore of the summer home of his childhood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took forrreeeevvvvveeeerrrrr to write.


	13. Act On Impulse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's where things get super complicated...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters, one month! I think that may be a new record!!! All the thanks to my own personal observer who won't leave me alone until this story is finished...or maybe it's all in my head?

September’s warning saturated every decision Peter made after he evaporated from his childhood home, the salt from the ocean still a tangy weight on his tongue and a new purpose to tether him.

Navigating became easier, more second nature, a beacon and touchstone in which he could go exactly where he desired. His world. His Olivia and Walter. After a lifetime of always feeling out of synch and out of place, he had the first taste of _his._

The idea of a child, _his and Olivia’s child_ , felt foreign and exhilarating, his chest blooming and expanding. He’d never wanted children, was paralyzed by the fear of children, but once he heard the words he wanted it more desperately than anything else he had in his entire existence. He also felt a deep remorse for a child that no longer existed because of his actions. His child. His son. It felt unnatural that he had as little clue about the child’s existence as his disappearance. Shouldn’t he have felt _something?_

The memory of his future with Olivia, their decision to not bring children into a dying world was so logical. There was no need to discuss it; it was cruel to do anything else. But the world wasn’t dying anymore. Because of him.

He flitted between worlds, knowing instantly when the taste was wrong and he was in some other Peter’s world and moved on quickly, afraid to linger too long for fear of being discovered.

He went to Walter in Saint Claire’s first. Walter felt like leather bound books and tasted like Red Vines. This was _his_ Walter, straggly beard and vacant expression and all and Peter felt a sense of longing when he was in the small room with the man.

“Heya Walter,” Peter said from his stool as Walter sat on the small bed, the mattress sagging from a lifetime of worn springs. Walter ignored him as usual.

“Today’s pudding. Butterscotch. Just in a couple of hours.” Peter said conversationally, reliving his experience with September in his mind.

Walter mumbled something unintelligible under his breath.

“I was at our summer home,” Peter began, looking for recognition. “It’s still there. Will still be there, when you get out.” Peter tried to ignore the smell of electricity in the air and focused on Walter.

“You’re going to be a grandfather one day,” Peter said the words cautiously, tasting them to see how they felt. “Which is a little frightening considering you used to hook me up to a car battery and shocked me until I pissed myself during my own childhood. My kid won’t have that childhood,” He paused, regretting it already, stomach sour.

“I never wanted kids because of you Walter. Because of what I went through. Because what was my example? Even during the good times…Even as an adult I was always so worried about you. It felt like I had my very own colicky toddler who was also my mad scientist of a father. And it was hard, and frustrating and often it was crazy. Your crazy made it hard.”

Walter yawned, digging a finger through the hairs in his beard to scratch his chin. Even through all the hair Peter could still see his father.  

“But it made me a better person. You made me a better man because I wanted to be better than you were.”

Peter stepped off the stool, pacing through the small width of the room, knees cracking.

He looked to the mirror in the room, and without surprise, he wasn’t in it. He had no reflection.

“I want to be a better man than my father. I never quite understood why my mother kept repeating that to me growing up. I thought it was because she was angry with you for being the man you were when you left us.”

Peter looked to his father on the sad, sagging bed.

“Na eínai kalýtero ánthropo apó ton patéra tou.” Peter said then, thinking of his mother. He reached out to Walter, to touch his shoulder, wanting to feel the flesh and blood of him.

“I don’t think it means to be a better man than you, Walter. I think it means to be a better father.”

He was surprised when he was met with the warmth of Walter’s hunched shoulder. Walter’s head shot up, eyes clear for once, and it was like it was the first time he’d noticed Peter in the room.

“Peter?” Walter asked from under his wiry beard. His face went pale when Peter pulled his hand back. Walter stared at him for a few moments before blinking back into oblivion.

 

* * *

 

Peter plummeted through a lifetime of Olivia’s, the thrill of Walter’s shocked face pushing him on. Something was different. Walter had seen him. The worlds were easier to expand. Something was happening to him. He wanted to see everything.

 _Olivia_ he thought as the worlds grew at his fingertips, expanding around him rather than blasting through him. _I want to see Olivia_ he kept repeating to himself.

He pushed through the membrane of the world as easily as treading through water. He felt it wash over him and he became whole.

He was in an office.

“Would you like to talk about the loss of your partner?” a woman’s voice cut through the air and Peter saw Olivia before he noticed the older woman seated across from her. Olivia’s face was tight in aggravation, wearing a look that made the hair on Peter’s neck stand on end. It was not a look he enjoyed seeing, especially when she would direct it at him.

Peter had missed half the conversation before he started paying attention again. The woman was short and starched, graying hair and very obviously a psychiatrist. No wonder Olivia looked like she wished she had her gun.

“…And it was suggested once again when you took an…unanticipated leave from the FBI last year. You did meet with a psychiatrist at that time?”

Peter’s ear’s pricked up. He wasn’t sure if he was stepping into something he wasn’t supposed to hear. But he didn’t exist.

Olivia didn’t blink. Peter saw the fury as she breathed evenly before she answered. There was fury buried under her blank face. Peter was beginning to become concerned for the unsuspecting woman within arms reach of Olivia.

“That’s classified information,” Olivia said tersely.

“Where you over there?” Peter asked as he watched Olivia’s face, testing. He felt a small burn in his stomach at the idea. She hadn’t actually been trapped over there still, had she?

“Your leave of absence isn’t through,” the woman answered and Peter grimaced. He walked around the office as the conversation continued, mulling over the idea. Olivia had gone to the other side in order to bring him back. Why would she go over now if he didn’t exist? He tested the taste of this world, closed his eyes to see if he got it wrong. He could tell without a doubt this was _his_ Olivia. He was in the right place.

“Are you seeing anybody?” the woman asked and Peter started paying attention again, morbidly interested.

“No.” Olivia answered without the hint of elaborating. Peter didn’t know if he felt sad or relieved. Not that he could tell if she was telling the truth or not.

“Not since John Scott?”

Peter rubbed his neck, feeling back like a voyeur that he didn’t think Olivia would appreciate even if he was nothing more than a wandering ghost. He closed his eyes to wait for the pull in his chest to give her privacy, but something the other woman said renewed his interest.

“Describe your relationship with Dr Bishop.” 

Peter crept closer, sliding along the woman’s side and waited for an answer.

Something happened, Peter felt a quick charge to his gut, not painful, but uncomfortable. Like his whole body had fallen asleep and was trying to wake itself back up again. The room darkened and he felt himself pulse in and out of it even though there wasn’t the familiar pull in his chest.

Then it was gone.

“Whoa,” Peter said as he examined his fingers for dexterity. He felt fine. “That was interesting.” He said as he turned to examine the room to make sure he was still where he thought he was.

Everything was as it was before, except for Olivia who was massaging the side of her temple like she had a headache.

“Everything okay?” the woman asked.

“Dr Bishop was institutionalized at St Claire’s after a lab fire killed his assistant. He was arrested for manslaughter but never charged,” Olivia said through gritted teeth. Peter’s eyes were wide. Olivia eye’s kept sweeping to where he was standing.

“Olivia?” he asked quietly, unsure if he’d alert the older woman.

It didn’t. The woman continued. “After the death of his son?”

Peter felt sick.

“That was several months earlier. But you already knew that, didn’t you?” Olivia responded, refraining from looking at him anymore. Peter peaked over the woman’s shoulder, trying to read her short-hand. He saw his information, or rather, the dead Peter’s short information. Bits on Walter. Mostly on Olivia.

_Delusional._

“I’m not at liberty to say,” the woman said as she closed the files and hide them away from Peter’s prying eyes.

Peter didn’t want to stay anymore. He let the pull in his chest tug at him when he heard Olivia,

“Well, why don’t you go ahead and liberate yourself because I’m here now, so I kinda feel like I deserve the truth, don’t you?”

Peter’s chest pulled him away, but not before he recognize those words as he was pulled into the ether. He’d said those same words to Olivia years back before he realized she was blackmailing him. Those _exact_ words. He disappeared into the next world; sure of he was supposed to go.

_She’s remembering him…_

He knew where to go next.

He had diligently avoided the other universe until now, not wanting anything to do with the side he was stolen from. It felt different than wandering in the infinite worlds; everything he experienced were different filters of the same picture, so close to his own but not the same.

He was so focused on finding Olivia in _her_ world. He never thought of looking her in _his._

Olivia had something peculiar when she clawed her way back from the other side. He sat at her hospital bed, the guilt eating a hole in his gut, ready to confess, to beg her forgiveness, to lean into her fury at being abandoned.

But she said something peculiar that he had taken as trauma before.

“I’m sorry, Olivia.” He had said. She didn’t let him elaborate. She was groggy, coming out of the medication.

“Don't apologize. You were the only thing that got me through. If it wasn't for you, I would never have made it back. You saved my life.”

Peter had taken it as a token to what a truly shitty human being he was. That she hadn’t realized how much he had fucked up. He assumed that she was coming out of shock or thought he had done more than the nothing he had done to save her.

He didn’t realize until he was already on the other side and felt the sun on his face was that maybe Olivia wasn’t just as emotionally traumatized as he thought. He felt like an idiot. Olivia mind didn’t use Peter as a projection to alert her that she was in the wrong place.

Because he hadn't been a projection.

Olivia had seen _him._

It was all starting to come together. She had seen him when she was over there because he had been there before.

* * *

He watched her cautiously, not wanting to change course too directly, to shift the tide to steer her from disaster. She was easy to watch, this Olivia in disguise, and it was easy to see why he didn’t think to come here earlier. He would have seen the red hair and the familiar swagger and bolted; assumed he was in the wrong place. He stood in the crowed, watched her with Charlie with the jagged scar and the springy blonde who was a bit too cocky for his liking.

There were moments that he was sure that she saw him, the flash of recognition glinting in her eyes before she pulled them away. He followed her to the lab and watched with a sickened stomach as they pumped her full of psychedelics and dumped her in the water, and watched her disappear; but it became apparent very quickly this was the course it was supposed to take for her to eventually get back home. He watched over the shoulders of Brandon as the chemistry in Olivia’s brain came alive and saturated the image. 

“It’s Cortexiphan,” he murmured before they other two men did.

His suspicions were confirmed when he saw the recognition linger on his face as she walked passed him in the middle of the street. She was trying very hard to ignore him.

Something else came to him then and his mood darkened.

“It’s the Cortexiphan. That’s why she can see me. It works on perception.” Something about the idea made him feel like he was slowly filling with cinderblocks.

He was on her heels when they entered the hospital and found that same look of recognition as she stared at an older man with hunched shoulders and the worn, tattered robe.

He watched when she was chasing after the frail-looking man, saw the alert flash and the air go sour. He witnessed the look of utter confusion the man had when Olivia dodged the falling wall of cinderblocks to tackle him, gasping for air and choking until Charlie handed her the small inhaler and ordered her to use it.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” the man had muttered in amazement as Peter let himself move on, grateful that there was a Charlie was looking after her in this universe.

He stepped from the construction sight into a bedroom. He didn’t recognize it, but he felt Olivia. She was there, perched on the end of the bed looking at the direction of the open door. But then she wasn’t. She was looking at him. He _felt_ her, the whirl of emotions: the fear, the excitement: the worry that she was going crazy. He had a flash of something in his head, an image of Walter and he realized why she had that faraway look in her eye.

He knew that every inch of him was smug. He couldn’t hide it.

“You know why you didn't die today, right?” He said, bold as brass and felt the thrill of her acknowledgment. “Because you didn't know the protocol. If you'd stopped for oxygen, you'd be dead right now. But you did something that he couldn't factor in: you kept running. You know why you did that. It's the same reason you thought you saw Walter in the hospital. It's the same reason why you think you're seeing me now. You're not from this world Olivia. You're not her.”

“You’re not real,” Olivia answered. Peter felt his grin widen. He knew she was lying.

He walked toward her, grounding himself into this reality. She could see him. Her face was alert, not frightened, but fascinated. God _damn_ he missed her. He reached for her chin, felt her skin under his fingertips.

“Real is just a matter of perception. I am here. And I'm a part of you that you have to hold onto. You can't forget who you are Olivia. You can't forget where you're from. You can't forget this.” He said before pressing his lips to hers and tasting her for the first time in what seemed like forever.

* * *

He checked in on Walter next, back at the lab to test the theory that he was slowly growing.

The lab was as it should have been, the smell reminding him of burnt toast and eggs with spinach. Peter reached out to touch his surroundings, slid his hand along his father’s paperwork, read his notes on paper and on whiteboard. The touch felt diminished, like he wasn’t whole when he clutched at it, but it was there. He could taste Walter’s presence and knew he didn’t have much time.

Peter rummaged through the compartments of the lab, sometimes opening cabinets, other times being able to push through them altogether. He reveled in the mere texture of things; the rough feeling of paper sliding through his fingers, the film of dust of neglect. It was a beautiful sensation to have return. He turned over box after box of new surprises.

On the fourth box he found what he was looking for: his old, worn and matted teddy bear that Walter had somehow miraculously still owned from Peter’s infancy. He had used it to block the sound from the petulant teenager who had a penchant of controlling people’s mind. Walter still had it.

“I’m here Walter,” Peter said as he gripped the bear. “Come and find me.” He moved it into another cabinet, into another box, sitting neatly on top of the record player. Walter would find him eventually. There was only a matter of time

He drifted away at the sound of footsteps whistling Bowie.

* * *

 

Peter struggled for a long time on the next step, taking longer than necessary before he decided what he was going to do.

Olivia needed to be dosed with Cortexiphan, that much he knew. What he didn’t know was how to find it. Or if he could actually bring himself to giving it to her. It felt too much like a violation to do without her permission. Too many people in Olivia’s life had fucked with her, himself included, and he wasn’t sure if he could do it even if it meant getting back home.

He distracted himself with Olivia, finding it easier to push through when she was on the other side, the Cortexiphan running wild through her system and lighting up like a homing beacon. She felt like hot electricity to him, like she was always on the verge of conducting and expanding. He was curious if anyone else could tell just how powerful she was.

At this particular moment, Brandon was examining her.

“Any headaches or lingering symptoms…mood swings, insomnia?”

Peter watched with interest, hiding behind the scientist at a safe distance. When the coast was clear, he pushed through.

“I’m not a lingering symptom.” Peter said out loud, challenging her. Olivia ignored him as they continued their conversation without him.

“Always so stubborn…” he muttered. He waited in silence as he watched his father enter the lab, glowered as Olivia agreed to the experiments. 

He waited for her. She was popping pills, almost identical to what he saw her take when she was crumpled in her apartment. He waited to see if he felt the kick to his chest.

“You can take as many pills as you want. I'm not going anywhere.” He said conversationally She was looking at him in the mirror of the locker, refusing to look at him directly. It was odd, he still couldn’t see himself. Olivia looked annoyed, swallowing the pills to spite him. She was trying to prove something to a figment of her imagination. How very Olivia he wanted to say.

“You’re not here.” She retorted.

“Look, I know why you agreed to take the test. You just want things to go back to normal, to be the Olivia you think you should be. But unfortunately, that’s not going to happen. Because you’re not their Olivia. And you can keep telling yourself that you’re fine, but you’re not fine. You’re not sleeping. And I’m not a lingering symptom. You can’t ignore me.”

It would have been remarkable for her to listen to his advice.

He bounced around after that, trying to keep from overwhelming her into a psychotic break (he’d been with Walter long enough to know what to avoid), but pushing her enough to persuade her. His Hail Mary was revealing Ella; saw the hope in her face and he could tell that he was finally breaking through.

His next step was Walter.

* * *

 The lab was filled with Bowie, the taste electric and he knew instantly something was wrong. There was too much movement, too much urgency in which Walter and Astrid moved and the long wail over a speaker of a heart flat-lining that he instinctively knew was Olivia’s.

_She was in the tank. Her heart had stopped._

Everything was in disarray in the world. Peter was chagrinned. He paused briefly at the place where Walter and Astrid had just abandoned. There was a needle discarded to the side, next to a vial of a distinct red color.

He didn’t have time to linger.

“You shouldn’t have let her in that death trap, Walter!” Peter growled as he watched his father and Astrid pull a lifeless, sopping Olivia out of the belly of the ancient tank.  _Why on earth would he ever let her go back into the thing?!_

He missed the urgency in Walter’s voice, a white static blocking all noise as Olivia’s ashen face stopped him cold as they laid her out on the ground, wires and all. He snapped back to the morgue, to his wife on the slab and he felt the dread surpass him.

“I told you if you put her in that thing you were going to kill her,” Peter raged as Olivia’s lips turned blue.

He was taken aback when Walter snarled back at him. “She made the choice. She knew the risks!” Walter returned to the tank. Peter stopped.

Then it clicked.

“It’s me. Olivia in the tank. She was looking for me. I was here!” Peter streamed as they attached the pads to try to shock her heart back into rhythm.

Whether it was a flash of brilliance or insanity, he dropped to his knees in between Walter and Astrid’s working hands and fingers and lightly touched Olivia’s wet cheeks between his palms.

“Na eínai kalýtero ánthropo apó ton patéra tou.” He whispered to her. Over and over again until the machine in Walter's hands flared and electrocuted him out of existence.


	14. Elastic Heart

He touched down in the middle of the night during a driving downpour.  The city streets were deserted and the thunderstorm raged angrily around him, soaking his clothing and bringing with it the smell of ozone and of home. A flash of lightning was followed by an enormous clap of thunder and it startled him, and he realized this wasn’t exactly the arrival he was envisioning when he sought this place out.

He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to ground himself, to look for her, to feel her out and he knew instinctively that he was close; that she was here somewhere. He was standing in the middle of a road, on either side of him a run-down strip of abandoned restaurants and boarded-up businesses and there was a distinctly derelict feeling to the air that he couldn’t put his finger on.

The headlights hit him before the car did.

The body of the taxi cab shot through him before he even realized it was headed straight for him, and he felt a _whoosh_ as it passed effortlessly through him to screech to a halt against the sidewalk, not even bothering to try to park.

Two darkened shadows emerged from the taxi into the pouring rain, and Peter watched as they ran to the rear of the cab.

“Olivia,” Peter muttered excitedly, watching as the Peter from this world dragged her from the backseat of the taxicab while the other man came around to follow them. The man’s skin was dark and his face urgent, but Peter didn’t recognize him. And then his eyes were immediately trapped by the enormous swell of Olivia’s pregnant stomach and he ran along behind them as the other Peter and the unknown man led her through the downpour.

“Maybe going to a hospital would be too much to ask for?” Peter shouted at the trio.

When he’d set out to find Olivia on this jump, this wasn’t exactly what he’d expected to be greeted with.  He’d seen too many awful things to have any expectation of ending up in any idyllic settings. But this was crazy. Watching himself kick open the fragile door of Wong’s of Boston to herd Olivia inside too fucked up, even for him. Especially when she was going to give birth right there to their kid.  

Olivia was already on her back with Peter bracing her, his hair sticking up in wild spikes from the rain and wearing a look that Peter immediately recognized as abject terror. Olivia’s face was drawn tight and nearly bone-colored as she gritted through a contraction and the other man gave directions in an even tone.

The place smelled like mold and sawdust, the few intact tables that remained were covered in spider webs and fallen ceiling tiles. Peter was sure a rat had scattered into a dark corner and he was less than overwhelmed at the birthplace of his child.

“You’ve done this before…uh,” Peter watched the look on his own disgusted face.

“Henry,” the man introduced himself as he helped to arrange Olivia. “I’ve driven a cab for the last decade. I’ve delivered a few babies,” he said calmly through a smile and Peter could tell even in the semi-darkness that it was strained. Peter knelt down beside the three of them, ignoring the bite to his knees.

“Though, never in an abandoned Chinese takeout place before,” Henry muttered.

Olivia made a pained face and squeezed her fist into Peter’s forearm, taking in long ragged breaths.

Peter stood again and was torn between the utter exhilaration of wanting to see the birth of his son, and the haunting sensation he got from this place. This isn’t where he wanted her. This place had a chill of danger, like he was standing on a dagger’s edge and the threat was following him from the outside.  

“It hurts,” Olivia grunted.

“I know sweetheart,” the Peter next to her grimaced, “it’s gonna be okay. You didn’t want to have some traditional birth in some boring hospital, did you? Just think— ” The rest of his reply was cut off when Olivia gasped and stamped her nails into Peter’s forearm and everything became exceptionally quiet.  

The only sound inside Wong’s of Boston was Olivia’s labored breathing, Henry’s soft voice murmuring directions, the thunder booming, and the rain pouring in sheets outside. Peter watched in the shadows as Olivia pushed. He had never wanted to be as whole as he did in that moment.

He couldn’t help but overflow with a sensation he hadn’t known he was capable of possessing.  An ingrained feeling of being tethered wholly to this little person he hadn’t even met yet. To his son. He watched silently as Olivia’s brow furrowed and her cheeks strained with effort.  Christ, how he loved her.

And as soon as he thought it, as soon as he felt it, the Peter holding her lifted his face up to stare directly where Peter stood, his eyes wide with shock.

There was a trace of something beyond mere recognition in that look. Like a memory playing over this Peter’s face as he looked where Peter stood. He continued to murmur for Olivia to push, all without tearing his eyes away from him.

But then he heard the voice. A tiny wail no louder than a gust of wind. He almost forgot about being a sentient ghost without a universe. He forgot about the Observers looking for him. He even forgot about Olivia’s dead face that clung to him like a second skin. He forgot everything except the small red face that was looking at him so directly that he could have evaporated.

“It’s a girl,” Henry said, “congratulations.”

_A girl?_

_A girl._

Nothing could have been better. He was elated.

“Get out of here!” a voice startled Peter back to reality. It was the other Peter’s voice. He was talking to _him._

“You have to go, NOW. They’re after you!” The Peter from the floor shouted at him, much to the confusion of the man and the exhausted looking Olivia whose weight Peter was supporting. It was abrupt and shocking.

Peter stood speechless as the other Peter turned to look out the restaurant windows. Peter’s gaze followed, confused, wanting nothing more than to stay here a little while longer. But his blood ran cold when he saw into the blackened night.

He felt the shockwave when he saw what this Peter was looking at.

Outside, standing in the pouring rain and shrouded in darkness stood nearly a dozen Observers, faces bland and illuminated by flashes of lightning. They didn’t move, they didn’t speak, they just stared.

“GET OUT OF HERE. They’ll find her!” Peter growled at him again, and Peter felt the punch to his lungs and he flickered back into blackness.

+++

Just as suddenly as the world had been ever-expanding around him, it boiled down to the size of the head of a pin. After being shredded and put back together Peter found the sun on his face and a warm breeze that carried with it the smell of fresh summer grass.

The park was alive with activity. Even though Peter’s knees burned anew from his jump he was alive with hope.

Never in a million years did Peter think he would find himself in a place like this. He watched the scene before him unfold from a safe distance.

Olivia was laid out on her stomach on top of a flannel picnic blanket, casually reading a book while Peter used the sway of her back as a pillow.  They looked more content than Peter could ever imagine.

He was far enough away to keep a safe distance but close enough to see the watchful gaze Olivia maintained while she read the book. With clammy hands, Peter followed her line of sight.

Not more than 15 feet from Peter sat a small child playing with dandelions, the sun lighting up her blonde hair hanging in loose pigtails down her shoulders. But it was her face that Peter recognized, the chunky cheeks that Peter hated as a child and Olivia’s eyes. It was like he and Olivia were perfectly jig-sawed into a tiny person. Peter’s heart stuttered as he watched her. She was beautiful.

“How does it feel?” A voice said from beside him, and Peter jumped.

“Jesus!” Peter cursed and glared at the man standing next to him.     

“You weren’t supposed to see this,” September said evenly. “You’re navigating quite well.”

“You said you could only find me when I was in this world. This is mine.” What Peter meant to say was, _she is mine._

“Yes, this future is inevitable. Under precise circumstances this will come to pass,” September said.

Peter smiled for the first time in what felt like forever. The little girl blew into a dandelion, sending small puffs into the air.

“It is only a matter of time before they find you now. You must return quickly or risk undoing everything that has been put into place.”

“The others?” Peter’s blood cooled in his veins, thinking back to the menacing faces of the Observers on the street from the encounter that had felt it had taken place only moments before.

“They know you’ve returned,” September said, and Peter turned to face him. September was staring intently at Peter’s daughter.

“What do I do?” Peter asked then, desperate to have this reality, to be this Peter who was so content and happy with his little family.

September looked grim, pulling his cuff back to reveal a watch that didn’t tell time.

“You need to return,” September said with an air of finality. He reached into the inside of his suit pocket and held something out to Peter. He pushed two vials filled with red liquid into Peter’s hand.

“Cortexiphan?” Peter was appalled. He knew instantly where this was going. “I’m not giving this to Olivia.”

September didn’t respond to Peter’s disgust, referring only to his watch again.

“Time is short. You’ve disrupted events already. This is what must happen in order for you to return. If you choose to return, there is no other way.” September finally said.

A blast suddenly erupted in the distance and Peter was almost thrown to the ground, his knees burning.

“It is time to go,” September said.

Another blast shook and the park erupted in screams, and Peter watched as Olivia and Peter scrambled to their feet.   

The hair on Peter’s neck stood on end. Through the disruption, Peter could see splits of light erupting in static shocks. Electricity clung to the air. Men in suits suddenly appeared in the park through the bursts of light. Observers. Lots of them, walking from nothing into existence. Peter looked to September. He lost sight of the little girl.

“Promise me you’ll save her!” Peter shouted at September, fisting the vials tightly. “If I do this, you promise me that you’ll save her! If you have any feelings for Olivia, you’ll do this!”

September’s nod was brisk; curt.

“How does it feel?” September asked then, through the commotion.

“How does what feel?” Peter shouted, bodies screaming and running through him like he didn’t exist. The pull tethered tightly in his stomach, twisting him away.

“Being a father,” September said and it was the last thing Peter heard before he turned to ash and disappeared with the wind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know. This story is going to be longer than the entire series. Let me play in it for a little bit longer. 
> 
> Dedicated to Professor X, for not letting me give up on this. Also for not telling me I'm crazy.


	15. Chapter 1

The air was cool inside Olivia’s room. He stood there in the darkness of her apartment, afraid to breathe even though the chance he’d be detected was nonexistent. It wasn’t just about being discovered, like Peter Pan sneaking into Wendy’s bedroom. He was on edge because he feared others would come along with him for the ride, since now, according to September, he’d been discovered. Whatever that meant.

He urgently wanted to return to the park, to see if September followed through on his promise to save the little girl with the pigtails and chunky cheeks. Based on his equivocal history with September, he really didn’t have a reason to trust the man, since he was part of the same group now trying to chase him away from his world. Because, as he’d just learned, his _child_ would be a threat.

He stood in darkness as Olivia slept, the vials of Cortexiphan in his hand heavy as boulders. They felt like poison, and he felt like a villain. And that’s what they were, poison. And he’d be the villain if he gave them to Olivia. But the Cortexiphan was the only way he’d get home. _She_ was the only way home. How ironic and fitting.

Olivia was quiet in her sleep, peaceful and unburdened by the horrors in her life. He remembered the sleepless nights when he slept by her side, the tossing and turning when they were married and fighting against the terror of the universe being ripped open.

He felt like a voyeur, a stranger in this place. He held up a vial, burning in his palm, his time here precious.

“What do you want me to do?” Peter whispered to her in the darkness. “Please, I need you to tell me if this is okay.”

Olivia turned in her sleep; face smooth and silvery-blue in the small splash of moonlight that escaped from between the window curtain.

He slid to the floor beside her, his back to the plush of the mattress. He could hear her breathing, the exhalations mirroring whatever she was dreaming about. He leaned his neck into her breath.

Everything hurt. His bones felt fragile. He realized he hadn’t felt hungry since being in this in-between place.

“Maybe I could leave them for you. Write out a little sign that said “ _INJECT ME,”_ like Alice and then the choice would be up to you,” he mused out loud.

“That wouldn’t be the craziest thing that’s ever happened. You wake up and see a note from a ghost in your bedroom telling you to inject yourself with experimental drugs cooked up by two mad scientists in the ‘80’s…” he whistled. “It would be close, though.”

More darkness. More silence.

“September tells me I’m supposed to come back. Because something big is going to happen that somehow, our nonexistent child is going to be able to stop. And, ‘Livia, I saw her. I saw our _kid_ and she’s…beautiful. She looks like you. She looks like me too, if you can believe that. A perfect little soul. I saw our future in a universe that’s not about to implode. Where you’re not gunned down by my father. And it’s because of her, somehow. I saw us _all_ , right before it goes to hell. I don’t know if I trust September. I thought I trusted the prophecy that told me that I needed to die to save the world. That I needed to put things right by not being here…” he paused as a dark thought struck him, “…but what if it was wrong? What if what I saw in that park wasn’t supposed to be me and you? What if it was some other Peter and some other Olivia?”

Olivia mumbled something unintelligible under her breath and Peter strained to hear it, waiting for a sign.

“I love you Olivia. I want that world. I want our kid. But I won’t do this unless you tell me it’s okay. I promised myself that I would never be who my father was. To be who Bell was. Even if I _never_ get home. I just can’t. You have to tell me what to do.”

Peter fisted the vial and slung his arms over his knees and sat in the comforting darkness, listening to Olivia’s murmurs and deep breathing. He sat there till near morning, the sun starting to melt away the darkness and he felt the warmth on his skin.

There was a tingling on the back of Peter’s neck and he knew his time here was running short. He made peace with himself and his choice not to return. The cost was too great. There would be no sign — why would there be? Why would there ever be?

“I miss ya, kiddo,” Peter said finally, twisting to look at Olivia, her brow furrowed. He reached out to cup her cheek, to feel her warmth once more before he moved on.

She stirred, just slightly against his hand, leaning into it.

“Peter…” she mumbled his name against his skin. Peter blinked. Then, by some miracle of God, she woke up, and screamed it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I dunno if anyone is checking this against Click in My Head or not, but I'm interested to see if anyone can follow this Mad Hatter's tea party. Because I try, and it makes me go cross eyed. Continuity is hard in parallel universes...
> 
> All the thanks to Bones for the fast turnaround on this chapter. Seriously. All. The. Thanks.


	16. Hello

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Birfday, buddy.

Any doubt he’d originally had about dosing her was erased when Olivia had sprung awake, screaming his name. _His name._ Some part of her, however small, still remembered him. And he knew she would never forgive him if he didn’t try everything he could think of to get back to her, including this.

It took Peter a week to give Olivia the full dose of Cortexiphan, using a stack of small-gauge needles he lifted from Walter’s lab and practicing on a Mr. Papaya he stole before Walter had the chance to blow him up. He had little clue on the dosing, but he remembered enough to know that direct injection into the brainstem resulted in an immediate reaction, while smaller doses into the bloodstream had an accumulative effect.  Hoping to keep the initial repercussions to a minimum, he kept the doses small and spread them out over a series.

He came each night after she went to sleep and carefully injected the Cortexiphan, a millimeter at a time, his stomach in ropes.  She never stirred when the small needle pierced her vein. After the first few injections, his name slipped from her mouth almost nightly.

He tried to keep his time with her short, the fear of leading the others to her a constant threat. If the Observers really wanted to keep their kid from existing, Peter couldn’t help but think that eliminating Olivia would be the obvious solution; she would be an easier target since she didn’t even know she was being hunted. Musing over that dark thought, Peter wondered if perhaps September wasn’t doing more to protect her than he realized.

He checked in on her often, but moved on quickly, each leap sprinkled with waves of paranoia at the thought of an Observer riding his coat tails to find her.

He was always drawn back to Walter’s lab. It felt like a safe haven. The hackles on his neck relaxed when he was inside the belly of Harvard, the pull in his stomach at ease. Being around Walter made him feel _normal._ He really had no idea what the next step was supposed to be to get oneself blinked back into reality, so he hoped hanging out with Walter might magically open up a solution in that unique way Walter’s ramblings always seemed to be able to do.

But Walter was characteristically distracted, as always.

Peter was sitting on a stool watching with a cocked head as Walter systematically pulled apart his ancient record player.  It was the same record player Peter had previously negotiated into position for Walter to find.  He had every available open space covered with its insides, screws and wiring and mechanical components littered everywhere. He was wearing headphones, even though they weren’t plugged into anything.

“Walter, how do you expect to put this back together again?” Peter asked in the most soothing voice and waited for Walter to get frustrated and pull apart more pieces.

“It was working perfectly fine before, Walter. All you had to do was check the belt drive…Astrid probably could have even fixed it for you…” Peter began, but then he looked at the entrails spread across the table and made a sour face.

“Not anymore, though,” he added in disgust, rolling his shoulders.

“Confounded contraption!” Walter snarled when the delicate piece in his hands snapped.

“Walter,” came a familiar voice and Peter saw Olivia’s hand snake onto his father’s shoulder, making him jump.

“Agent Dunham!” his father exclaimed, and Peter smirked. Walter took off the headphones.

“What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be out. You should be recuperating. You’ve been through quite the trauma.”

Peter’s mouth tightened into a scowl.

“What did you do to her, Walter?” Peter grumbled, leaning his chin onto his palm.

Olivia’s face tightened, but she smiled gently at Walter. “I’m okay, Walter. I needed to see you. You haven’t returned any of my messages.”

Walter, for his part, looked sheepish. “I apologize dear, as you can see I have been dealing with much more pressing matters…”

“You dismantled your record player, Walter,” Peter interrupted, “some might call it avoidance.”

“I can see that,” Olivia cocked an eyebrow at the mess, “others might call it avoidance.”

Peter couldn’t help the smile that snaked across his face.

“It’s broken,” Walter said as he tried to sort the mess into more manageable piles. “It sticks on a single song on a specific album, the blasted thing. Haven’t been able to fix it yet. It plays everything else perfectly except the record I want to listen to.”

Peter straightened. “Which record?” he asked, at the same time Olivia did.

“Bowie,” Walter answered, and a shock rippled across Peter’s shoulder blades.

“Wasn’t that the record that was playing when I went into the tank?” Olivia asked. Walter physically recoiled. Peter hopped off the stool to move in closer, his face alive.

“It’s me,” Peter said.

“The power surge, it must have blown a fuse when you…” Walter didn’t finish his trailing thought.

“It was me, Walter. It’s me! I was here. Or, I was there,” Peter countered. “I blew the fuse, somehow. I created a distortion when she was in the tank.” Peter’s mind raced, excitement alighting his face. It was soon followed by a rush of hot dread.

“It’s the tank.”

He missed the rest of their discussion, instead pacing around the lab, considering the possibilities.

He caught up with the rest of the conversation he’d been ignoring when he realized they were talking about _him_.

“Walter, I want to ask you about your son,” Olivia said.

Walter’s face went cold. “My son? Why on earth would you want to know about him? He hasn’t been alive in quite some time, I just told you.”

Peter felt the thrill of being recognized, even in death.

“Because I think he might be important to what’s happening,” Olivia continued. “What’s been happening to me.”

Peter’s felt like he hit jackpot. “You remember. You remember me.”

“Nonsense,” Walter dismissed her supposition immediately.

“And we still don’t have an explanation for how the Cortexiphan got into my system again. Or why I’m seeing things that shouldn’t exist,” Olivia said.

Peter felt a jolt, the beginning of the pull that signaled his time here was short. He raced through events in his mind. How was it possible? Olivia had already been in the tank. He’d already been here, because the Cortexiphan was already present in her system. SHIT.

“His name was Peter, right?” she said, and Peter felt like he’d been kicked in the chest. He was flickering around the edges, feeling the pull deep inside his stomach.

“Not yet,” Peter groaned, a siren going off somewhere in the distance.

He had difficulty concentrating on the conversation now, stamping his feet into the ground and trying to forestall the inevitable.

“The boy is dead,” Walter repeated. “I watched him die. In no universe, not this one or the next one, does the boy Peter Bishop exist.”

Peter’s smile was manic, hot.

“Oftentimes, the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one,” Peter ground out, and Olivia flinched. He watched on, even though the flickering was stronger.

“Olivia, what is it?” Walter asked.

“Did you hear that?” Olivia said, raising her hand to her head in obvious pain.

“It’s me, Olivia. It’s me. You’re close, you’re so close. It’s the tank. It’s here. You’re my way home.”

The electricity was expanding in Peter’s chest, white hot and explosive. He was being pulled away, but this time something was different. Wrong.

The lines around this world faded into heavy waves, but everything about it was unfamiliar. He turned his head and saw shadows in the ether, the glowing outlines of bodies of men, becoming more and more distinct, and his heart pounded in his chest. Behind him, an arm reached out and touched his shoulder, burning him black until he exploded away.   


End file.
